Games Beaten 2021

[Markies]

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2021!
*Denotes Replay For Completion*

1. Midtown Madness 3 (XBOX)
2. X-Men 2: Clone Wars (GEN)
3. Sonic Adventure 2 (SDC)
4. Mega Man 7 (SNES)
5. Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra (PS2)
6. Bust A Move 4 (PS1)
7. Phantasy Star IV (GEN)



I beat Phantasy Star IV on the Sega Genesis this afternoon!

Long before I discovered the Backloggery, I had bought all of the Phantasy Star Games for the Genesis. At the time, they were only like $40 and I found them all in a pretty short order. They sat Unfinished for a very long time until I discovered the Backloggery and started to go through them. I also had many Unfinished Dragon Quest games at the time, so instead of burning myself out, I decided to jump between the two series' every year. Well, after several years, it has come time to play Phantasy Star IV. I've heard that it is the best in the series and makes it all worthwhile. With my excitement ready, I put it as my Genesis game to beat this year and started it up.

I can safely say without a doubt that Phantasy Star IV is the Phantasy Star on the Genesis. It amazes me how much it blows the other two games out of the water. Phantasy Star II has great music, but is grindy as all hell and can be rather mean. For Phantasy Star III, it had an interesting generational aspect, but it was also grindy and very slow. For Phantasy Star IV, the game still has amazing music, but everything else about the game is also great. The grind is far less steep in the game as having 5 Party Members helps in the damage output. Also, the levels go by fairly quickly, you gain money easier and the dungeons are fairly short. The game seems to fly by as I was able to go through chunks of the game in a fairly quick fashion. The story is mostly interesting, but it still has some confusing points. You beat what you think is the big bad several times before you actually do, so the surprises land kind of weakly. You rotate several characters throughout the game and each one brought a new personality to the story along with the team makeup. At times, I mostly had fighters while others had a bunch of mages, so I had to change my way of attack a few times throughout the game.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Phantasy Star IV. It is the best in the series by far and the best pure RPG on the Sega Genesis. I don't normally say this, but I don't think playing II and III are necessary to enjoy IV. There are some small callbacks, but Phantasy Star IV is so good compared to its predecessors that you can almost skip them. Play them if you love history and game progression, but if you are a fan of traditional turn-based JRPG's, then Phantasy Star is a must play!

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2021 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
* indicates a repeat

1. Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland (PS3)
2. Portal 2 (PC) *
3. Atelier Judie: The Alchemist of Gramnad (PS2)
4. Pipo Saru 2001 (PS2)
5. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (N64)
6. Atelier Viorate: The Alchemist of Gramnad 2 (PS2)
7. Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SFC)
8. The Legend of Mystical Ninja (SFC)
9. Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg (PS1)
10. Ganbare Goemon 2 (SFC)
11. Paper Mario: Origami King (Switch)
12. Star Fox 64 (N64) *
13. Super Paper Mario (Wii) *
14. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GC) *
15. Demon's Crest (SNES)
16. Cathedral (Switch)
17. Super Mario 3D World (Switch) *
18. Bowser's Fury (Switch)
19. Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos (Switch)
20. moon (Switch)
21. Casltevania 64 (N64)
22. Captain Rainbow (Wii)
23. Doraemon: Nobita To Mittsu No Seireiseki (N64)
24. Blast Corps (N64)
25. Doraemon 2: Nobita To Hikari No Shinden (N64)
26. Custom Robo (N64)
27. Doraemon 3: Nobita No Machi SOS! (N64)

28. 64 Trump Collection: Alice No Wakuwaku Trump World (N64)

With a title that unwieldy and long, you may quite rightfully have no idea whatsoever what this game actually is. But fear not! It's actually not so complicated (although it definitely still is, even for a Japanese game, a very weird and unwieldy title X3). Here in Japan, we call Dutch playing cards "trump", and the "Alice" in the title refers to Alice in Wonderland, as this is an Alice in Wonderland-themed collection of card games played with Dutch playing cards. This is a game I heard of a LONG time ago after just doing a simple google search for interesting Japan-exclusive N64 games. I managed to find a copy not too long after I moved here, and it was the first game I streamed on Twitch a little over a year ago. My particular copy is also one of the most immaculate N64 games I've ever seen, and ALWAYS boots up first time, so most of this thing's life for me has been to test the console to make sure it's booting properly X3. To celebrate my one year of streaming, I finally sat down and played through the whole story mode over the course of like 3-ish hours.

The story is, fairly predictably, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland but with basically every disagreement solved by Alice (whom you play as) beating her opponent in some card game. The game has a very tongue-in-cheek approach to how its written, and even pokes fun at the very premise, with Alice sarcastically predicting the upcoming card game only for her opponent to enthusiastically confirm her prediction XD. It takes place over 8 chapters in game, so 8 card games, and is fairly short. I had a lot of fun doing the voices for the characters on stream~.

The game itself is really what it says on the tin, and it's really just a bunch of card games. There are like 16 of them in total, ranging from obvious ones like Old Maid, simple card matching, and Sevens, to variants of other games like "Page One" (the game Uno is based off of), and even oddballs like Seven Bridge (which is basically just Mahjong but played with playing cards). It was quite the work of luck to be able to pass most of the story trials for the games, particularly ones like Seven Bridge, and some of the rule sets were different enough from the how-to guides I'd looked up online that I was a bit confused on how to play, but you can look up how to play any of them whenever you want by just pressing the start button, so that's an awesome quality of life feature. Not every game is playable multiplayer, as the game has no ability to hide player information like that, but a fair amount of them still are. There are even a few games you can play that aren't present in the story mode like blackjack and video poker. It's all well put together, even if it is a bit confusing to get the grasp of the game's house rules sometimes.

The game's presentation is really cute. The music is alright and is very "card game" in its presence but non-intrusiveness, but it's the graphics that are a bit more noteworthy. It has a very Paper Mario-like pop-up storybook aesthetic to it, as the story mode is presented literally as a story book on a big stage. And this is all in 1998, so actual Paper Mario was still two whole years away. It has a very charming and memorable aesthetic, and fits the "family fun" nature of a card game collection really well.

Verdict: Recommended. It's hard to really judge a game like this on most levels. Though it's a pretty cheap, albeit uncommon, game, the amount of text makes it pretty difficult to recommend as an import. But if that isn't a problem for you and a somewhat multiplayer-light card game simulator with a cute aesthetic on N64 is something you think you need in your life, then this is will fit the bill about as well as anything could X3

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC

Thief is THE prototypical stealth game which eschews the combat focus of first person games of the time in favor of rewarding skillful stealth play and avoiding conflict. This was a new way to approach things, and it introduces a large number of mechanics that we would continue to see with stealth games going forward. However, it is very rough from a gameplay perspective and shows all the warts of developers coming up with something new and not really knowing what to do with it.

In Thief you will go through a series of missions with some sort of thieving goal, usually the capture of some specific treasure. Frequently you will also have a "collecting X value of miscellaneous treasure" as well, to help get you into the mood of things. The game has a sort of medieval with a bit of steampunk aesthetic. As the game goes on a larger overarching plot begins to unfold, once you have demonstrated your abilities in the first few missions. It all comes to a head with you getting sucked into a "gotta save the world" plot that ends with you disrupting the big bad's ritual by swapping out the magic artifact with a fake. So even at the end you need to solve your problems not with violence, but with stealth.

To aid you in this endeavor you have a lot of useful tools. The one you'll get the most mileage out of is the blackjack; one hit on an unaware enemy and they are knocked cold, ready for you to hide the body and steal any important items (like keys). You do have a sword as well, but it causes enemies to make noise and leaves bloodstains that enemies can detect. But sometimes you gotta go for it (particularly with hostile fauna). A wider utility comes from your bow and arrows. In addition to a standard damage arrow you have a variety of specialty arrows to make things easier. The moss arrow lets you turn a walkable surface into something that muffles your footsteps, while the water arrow can douse lights. The gas arrow can knock out people at a distance, while the fire arrow is for when you really need something dead. The noisemaker arrow can distract enemies, and finally, the rope arrow can help yo ascend to new heights. You also get a selection of tools such as lockpicks, gas mines, and flash bombs. You'll need all of these tools to accomplish your mission objects.

As mentioned, pretty much every level is "get to some key item, get a certain amount of loot along the way, and get out". Higher difficulties increase the amount of loot you need to get and reduce your ability to engage with enemies in a deadly fashion (no innocents killed in hard, no one killed in expert). Aside from this and a handful of extra guards there really isn't a difference between the difficulties. And the loot requirement basically turns it into "knock out everyone" simulator, which is less fun than taking out strategic targets as you move through. To give you an idea, the speedrun for expert is twice the length of the speedrun for normal.

Those warts I mentioned come through in two ways. One is in many of the level designs; some of them are quite strong, where you have a wide open mansion available for you to find the best path through. But others are much more linear and force more combats on you. This becomes particularly prevalent when anything supernatural is involved. The game's story causes a lot of monsters to be featured as the game goes on, and these are more combat heavy and don't let you use the same tricks as before. This comes to a head in the mission where you lose all your gear AND you have a series of well lit hallways to traverse. It ends up being easier to just dash through with an enemy train on your heals than to try and be stealthy. Fortunately, the last two missions are better about things. But these monsters are the second thing that drags the game down.

Overall Thief is better as an example of what the stealth genre would give us, rather than as a good game on its own merits. Every single gameplay element in it will show up in future stealth games; light based visibility, different surface audio affecting detection, knocking out being better than killing, moving bodies, and guards intelligently reacting when you screw up being stealthy. It's worth a play if you're a fan of the genre, but don't expect it to be a home run.

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne

Killer Instinct first stormed into arcades back in 1994 to challenge the dominance of Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. It sat as a mixture of the two; it takes the control layout and moment-to-moment gameplay of Street Fighter II, but with a "mature" edge derived from Mortal Kombat. But it does a few interesting things of its own and ends up carving its own place in fighting game history.

Killer Instinct is visually a treat; it uses prerendered 3D animations a la Donkey Kong Country (no surprise, since it was made by Rare) with a very smooth framerate to generate the prettiest looking fighting game of the mid 90s; it has a higher frame count to its animations than both Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter which lends a large amount of smoothness to everything. This is most important with KI's most distinctive feature; the combo system.

While both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had combos, these were more the results of how timing and recovery works for each of the moves. In Killer Instinct combos are a core feature. It is set up as a system of openers, linkers, and enders. A given opener will have one or more linkers available that continue the combo; said linkers can then either transition to another linker or to an ender. Enders cap things off by clearing the enemy away in a fashion that they have to go through knockdown recovery, whereas dropping the combo leaves you vulnerable for an immediate follow up. These combos tend to involve more hits than button presses, leading to a lot of flash and a general feeling of awesomeness as you pull them off. On the flip side, your opponent can use a combo breaker to end the combo and knock you away instead, with a good chunk of damage along with it. This is designed to give counter play and prevent you from just being locked into a cycle of pain.

Another interesting thing Killer Instinct does is with the health system. While contemporary fighters would start each combatant off with full health and it's the best two out of three falls, in Killer Instinct it is instead first to reduce the enemy healthbar twice. This sounds like a distinction without difference until you see it in action. See, when your opponent falls you have a transition while their health is refilled to their second bar, but you are still at whatever health you were when they fell. So knocking them out by the skin of your teeth will likely see you getting knocked out shortly thereafter, making matches overall closer.

From the MK side of things the game gets a system of "Danger" actions. An enemy who loses two healthbars goes into a "danger" state (a la Finish Him!); from there you can execute a variety of finishes, either character specific No Mercy moves or a stage fatality. But when an enemy gets low you also can finish them off with a flash combo; either a combo into a No Mercy or a straight up Ultra Combo where you beat the bajeesus out of them. The game also gets a fairly bullshit final boss from Mortal Kombat; Eyedol hits incredibly hard, has very little start up and recovery on his moves, and he can take an action to regain health (which will keep going if he starts it when taking out your first life bar). Fortunately, he does not seem to read inputs, so playing a bit more conservatively and getting decent at combos to knock out some damage and you can push through.

Overall Killer Instinct is a very solid fighting game that has a lot of style and does a good job of making the player feel like they're accomplishing something. It won't hesitate to knock the crap out of you if you get cocky, but at the same time you can get surprisingly effective fairly quickly (at least against the CPU). I think it has just the right amount of depth without going too crazy like some modern 2D fighters.

[Flake]

January Thru February:

January
Thirteen Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PS4)
Dark Stalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (PSTV)

February

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (PS3)
Metroid Prime (Wii)
King of Fighters 14 (PS4)
King of Fighters 2002: Ultimate Match (PS4)
Splatoon 2 (Switch)
Super Mario 3D World (Switch)

March

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch)
Bowser's Fury (Switch)
Triggerheart Exelica (Xbox Series S)
Guardian Heroes (Xbox Series S)
Megaman 4 (Xbox Series S)

Just doing a little beaten list house keeping before the month is out. I got an Xbox Series S and I've been having fun with some old titles and that really cool clicky d-pad. No reviews or thoughts, just some fun old games. And Guardian Heroes is still the shit.

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

1. EYE: Divine Cybermancy - PC
2. Legend of Grimrock - PC
3. Legend of Grimrock 2 - PC
4. Shovel Knight - Wii U
5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - PS4
6. Yoshi's Island - SNES
7. Vectorman 2 - Genesis
8. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
9. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest - GC
10. Bomberman '93 - TG-16
11. Cannon Fodder - PC
12. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei - Saturn
13. Dragonborne - Game Boy
14. Rock n' Roll Racing - PC
15. The Lost Vikings - PC
16. Blackthorne - PC
17. Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES
18. Bravely Default II - Switch
19. Axelay - SNES
20. Ryse: Son of Rome - XBOne
21. Killer Instinct (2013) - XBOne
22. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition - PC
23. Thief: The Dark Project - PC
24. Killer Instinct - XBOne
25. Killer instinct 2 - XBOne

Killer Instinct 2 came out one year later because in those days fighting games needed regular revisions. It has the same size roster, swapping out Riptor, Cinder, and Thunder for the three newcomers and swapping bosses, and it changes up inputs for a lot of the incoming characters. It also updates the combo system to be a bit easier to string everything together. As a result you have a slightly more polished entry that has all of the good of the original; a sort of Street Fighter II Turbo to the original's Street Fighter II.

One thing you'll notice is there are a lot less charge inputs, as well as the addition of a throw. This reduces the amount of defensive play. To replace the charge inputs a lot of characters now use a quarter circle from one diagonal to the other (e.g. DF->DB or DB->DF). This ends up flowing better using them mid combo. Speaking of the combo system, that's the biggest change in this entry. Instead of a hardcoded list of "this move has these linkers which can chain in this fashion" it's now a more freeform system based on the strength of the button you use; if you open with a Fierce you can chain with a medium, then a light; light wraps back to fierce. You still can't infinite due to things like knock away and the like, but it leads to a system that is much easier to get going with. On the flip side, combo breakers are much easier to execute; instead of guessing the strength they used you instead need to counter a punch with a kick and vice versa.

There's not much else to mention. The "finish him"-esque state no longer exists, so you only have Ultras and Ultimates as a way of showing off when you win. Similarly, to execute the stage fatalities you need to pop an enemy up when you remove the last of their health. This is actually required to beat Gargos; he will stay at 1 HP until you pop him up and trigger the stage fatality (whereas Eyedol just had different defeat videos depending on how you won). This can be quite infuriating, as taking him to 1 at the end of a combo by the skin of your teeth probably gets you a loss, as he's likely to kill you on wake up. And like Eyedol he is your standard bullshit boss complete with heal.

Overall KI2 is the prototypical fighting game iteration that tweaks things without making major changes. If you enjoyed the first you'll probably enjoy this one, and if you didn't enjoy the first you likely won't like this one (unless the things you didn't like about the first were some very specific parts of the combat engine that were changed, like charge character prevalence).

[Markies]

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2021!
*Denotes Replay For Completion*

1. Midtown Madness 3 (XBOX)
2. X-Men 2: Clone Wars (GEN)
3. Sonic Adventure 2 (SDC)
4. Mega Man 7 (SNES)
5. Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra (PS2)
6. Bust A Move 4 (PS1)
7. Phantasy Star IV (GEN)
8. Gunbird 2 (SDC)



I beat Gunbird 2 on the Sega Dreamcast this evening!

Before COVID, I used to frequent a Pinball Arcade every other Saturday. They are still open infrequently and we don't go as much, but it is still a regular occurrence for me. One of the aspects I love is they have several MAME machines that have emulated versions of Arcade and old console games. I have spent many hours up there discovering new games and playing new ones that I had never played before. Before of that, I have discovered many great Shoot'em Ups, which is a genre that I enjoyed, but knew very little of. One night, I discovered Gunbird 2 and loved every moment of it. Thankfully, I came home to find that a fairly faithful DreamCast port was released many years ago. Well, during the beginning of the Pandemic, I decided to treat myself with a copy as they are fairly expensive. Deciding it was time to play it for myself, I decided Gunbird 2 would be my Dreamcast game to beat this year.

Gunbird 2 is an extremely faithful arcade port of a fantastic 2D Shoot'em Up. You have several characters to choose from at the beginning. Each character has its own shot type and sub weapon, so each character feels unique and different. Also, one of the characters is Morrigan from Darkstalkers, so that is a nice Easter Egg for Capcom fans. You then go through eight different levels with a boss at the end of each level. The levels are fairly short with the majority of the time being taken up the boss. That aspect reminds me of Treasure games, where the boss fight is the meat of the game. Each character has their own story that unfolds throughout the game as well. You also have bombs at your disposal and a large charged shot that fills up with each enemy that you kill. Both of those are unique to each character as well, so that is more incentive to replay the game. The game has really great music and some beautiful 2D graphics. It also never really feels cheap, which is great in a Shoot'em Up.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Gunbird 2. The game doesn't have much meat to it outside of beating the game with all of the characters. But, the gameplay and the different characters bring out a great experience overall. Shoot'em Ups that are good for even basic players to play are really hard to find as most of them dive straight into the Deep End. With Gunbird 2, it's a great example of Shoot'Em Up that anybody can pick up and play.

[Syndicate]

...in a better late than never I finally finished Okami. I was playing it for the December Together in Retro. So 85-hours later I have to say I regret waiting so long to play this gem, it was really good, easily one of the best Zelda inspired games I've ever played. I think that I'm going to track down a copy of Okamiden now. My time w/Okami really sums up why I really enjoy Together in Retro so much, I get a chance to play games I've been meaning to get back to in my backlog and more often than not have a great time.

[prfsnl_gmr]

...in a better late than never I finally finished Okami. I was playing it for the December Together in Retro. So 85-hours later I have to say I regret waiting so long to play this gem, it was really good, easily one of the best Zelda inspired games I've ever played. I think that I'm going to track down a copy of Okamiden now. My time w/Okami really sums up why I really enjoy Together in Retro so much, I get a chance to play games I've been meaning to get back to in my backlog and more often than not have a great time.

Yes! That game rules, and I’m glad you enjoyed it. Okamiden is, basically, more if the same, but it is different enough that you won’t grow tired of it. Also, it’s a technical marvel, and it looks amazing on the DS.

[Ack]

1. Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard (PC)(Adventure)
2. Revulsion (PC)(FPS)
3. Nonogram - Master's Legacy (PC)(Puzzle)
4. Sekiro (PC)(Action-Adventure)
5. Grim Dawn (PC)(Action RPG)
6. Grim Dawn: Ashes of Malmouth (PC)(Action RPG)
7. Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods (PC)(Action RPG)
8. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa's Rampage (PC)(FPS)
9. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior (PC)(FPS)

Yeah, this is the other standalone release for Viscera Cleanup Detail and was released as a tie in to the Shadow Warrior reboot. This time you still play as a janitor, albeit one that is voiced like a much older take on the rebooted Lo Wang character. He comments on the gore, he sings to himself, and every now and again he'll drop a classic FPS reference that at least left me smirking.

This time, you're going into a lobby after Lo Wang has had a murder party, so it's up to you to clean up the left over body parts, bullet shells, and ninja stars. Oh, and there's a bunch of cash lying around, which you could also use to fund your retirement, so do that. Nobody will notice when you walk out with a couple million in bloody dollars.

Beyond that, it's the usual mop, sweep, and incinerate. You mainly move through two very shiny lobbies and a couple of hallways full of museum pieces. Try not to get overzealous and do more damage, those artifacts are worth money when they're not shattered on the floor.

Yeah, VCD is a pretty one-note joke, but it offers some nice tie ins and parody ideas. Unfortunately, I don't have anyone else to play it with at the moment, and since levels don't change, well, doing it solo gets a little stale. But the entertainment of the two standalone titles was worth it at least.