Games Beaten 2024

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Fri Oct 18, 2024 7:52 pm

Partridge Senpai's 2024 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
* indicates a repeat

1~50

51. Adventures of Lolo (Famicom)
52. Adventures of Lolo 2 (NES)
53. Adventures of Lolo II (Famicom)
54. Adventures of Lolo 3 (NES)
55. Kickle Cubicle (NES)
56. Adventures of Lolo (GB)
57. Cocoron (Famicom)
58. The Darkness (PS3)
59. Haze (PS3)
60. Animaniacs (GB)
61. Lair (PS3)
62. Bionic Commando (PS3)
63. Donkey Kong Land (GB)
64. Darkwing Duck (NES)
65. Donkey Kong Land III (GBC)
66. Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB)
67. Metroid II (GB) *
68. Pokemon: Brilliant Diamond (Switch)
69. Eggerland (FDS)
70. Eggerland: Meikyuu no Fukkatsu (Famicom)
71. Eggerland: Souzou he no Tabidachi (FDS)
72. Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima (SFC)
73. Legendary Starfy (GBA) *
74. Legendary Starfy 2 (GBA)
75. Tales of the Abyss (PS2) *
76. Tales of the Tempest (DS)
77. Tales of Eternia (PS1)
78. Nier: Replicant (PS3)
79. Tales of Symphonia (PS3) *
80. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (PS3)
81. Tales of Zestiria (PS3)
82. Tales of Berseria (PS3)
83. Gargoyle's Quest II (Famicom)
84. Bionic Commando: Rearmed (Steam)
85. Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
86. Resistance 2 (PS3)

87. Killzone 2 (PS3)

Continuing on from the two Resistance games I played previously, I decided to play through the last of the three big PS3 FPS games my friends got for me. Killzone is another series I had basically no exposure to beyond Col. Radec being a playable character in PlayStation All-Stars, so I really didn't know what to expect with this game beyond "probably a good shooter," and boy was I surprised with what I ultimately got XD. It took me about 6.5 hours to beat the game on normal mode on real hardware.

Killzone 2 follows a soldier named Sev, a member of Alpha team during the invasion of the Helghast's home planet of Helghan. The Interplanetary Strategic Alliance is taking the fight to them(?), and going after their leader Emperor Visari. Outside of that, we don't get much story or setup at all. On its surface, Killzone 2's story is an incredibly shallow one even for the time (in my experience, anyhow). Not just is everyone, from our heroes to our villains, extremely flat and boring characters, but they don't even bother to set up the story in any way. Unless you've played Killzone 1 already, you'd have virtually no idea that this is all part of a counterattack after the Helghast attempted to invade the ISA's home planet in the previous game or really that the Helghast are bad people at all. The game seems to completely forget to actually portray the Helghast as evil or bad in the context of *this* story, and the aggression towards them feels wildly baseless as a result.

A lot of shooters from this time period get portrayed as grotesque, racist power fantasies, but I was frankly *shocked* at just how deeply Killzone 2 earns that description. The sheer degree to which the people of Helghan are both universally painted as evil (?) soldiers simply because they dress scary and are part of the opposing side is somewhere between comical and horrifying. You're simply meant to blindly accept that these people who dress different & scary and are natives of this desert planet for which you have no context are evil just by the nature of your role as the protagonist, and it's *very* hard to ignore just how much that feels familiar to propaganda against the people of the Middle East of the time in conflicts like the Afghan and Iraq wars.

Our protagonists themselves are also very overtly racist a LOT towards the people of Helghan. They even have some in-universe racial slurs for them (the most common being "hig", I'm not kidding) that our main characters disdainfully shout a LOT over the course of the story. This is all while they dump lavish praise on you for every little thing you do, and that got to the point that it was making me actively uncomfortable with just the degree that the game thinks the player's ego needs to be coddled ^^;. I've gotta give credit to the voice actors, frankly, because the sheer disgust that they shout things like "fuckin' hig" as they walk past dead soldiers with is truly uncannily similar to how *real life* Neo-Nazis and racists say a *very* similar real world racial slur. In short, this game's writing is a revolting fascist propaganda piece. It is a giant screed glorifying racial violence and other-ing of people different than you, and the whole thing feels like a massive excuse to give white people a racial slur that they can say without feeling bad because it's directed towards a real life racial group.

Ironically, people like Col. Radec and Emperor Visari wind up feeling downright sympathetic by the end of the game. Their home world is being destroyed and their people slaughtered by an army that's morally no better than them but thinks themselves on a universally higher moral ground. The Helghast battle barks of "Death to the invaders!" feels incredibly justified given that that is precisely what you, the player, are, even though the game is far too un-self aware to actually do anything with that narratively. There's frankly a huge opportunity here to make a compelling story about now neo-liberal military action sees itself, and how actions of things like the U.S. military (which the ISA is so clearly styled after) are so clearly unjustified acts of slaughter, but this story is completely uninterested in even approaching topics as radical and left-wing as even the remotest anti-military sentiments. This game gave me a profound disrespect and honest contempt for the writing team at Guerrilla Games, because they're people who should feel deeply, deeply ashamed for having the gall to publish something that glorifies and celebrates racial hatred and xenophobia to this degree.

Mechanically, the game is an alright first-person cover shooter when it's not getting bogged down in its strange button layout problems. You've got an array of guns that feel pretty good to shoot and are balanced quite well, though there's nothing nearly as flashy or cool as you'd see in a Halo or Resistance game. They do make the very odd choice to make this not a two-gun game (like Call of Duty or Halo), but a 1 gun + crappy pistol game. Needing to choose one main gun and stick with it isn't an unforgivable crime, but I just don't think it's a gameplay style I find very fun. Frankly, for me, personally, I don't think I'm a huge fan of the whole concept of a first-person cover shooter in the first place, as it makes the action flow way too slowly compared to games whose concept of cover is just "duck or stand behind something". The idea of holding L2 to either crouch or hug into cover mechanically is a neat idea, but even having crouch bound to the same button as duck is often very annoying because you'd obviously want to do crouch without locking into cover at least *sometimes*.

The game has a fair few weird button choices like that, with the weirdest one being that, if you're holding down the aim-down-sights button, you actually *cannot* reload or throw a grenade until you let go of the ADS button. Maybe this is down to how ADS is a toggle, not a hold down, by default, and I played with it turned to a hold down action, but that in and of itself is a gross oversight of design towards the way so SO many shooters played by 2009. The level design is fine and the enemy design is to, though the hell gauntlet of the final level and the dogshit final boss are certainly exceptions to that. It's certainly not perfect design, but it's fine for what it is at the very least.

The last issue I really had is with the way the game is put together is the way it runs. Compared directly against the first two Resistance games (the second of which came out only a few months before this), this game runs quite badly despite being a game made solely for the PS3 hardware. Loading screen barriers that freeze the action solid, sometimes for so long that I worried the game had crashed, populate the game quite heavily despite never doing so in a lot of other shooters at the time. The game is at least very pretty graphically for the time (despite the low color palette), but it pays for this in not infrequent framerate plummets as well as a *terribly* low FOV. I'm generally not even one to care about framerate or FOV, but it was so frequently *so* hard to see what I was doing just because the FOV was so small that I can't not mention it here. Overall, Killzone 2 is a competently enough put together shooter that I can easily believe was pretty fun in multiplayer, but the campaign at least really failed to impress even against my relatively low sample size of other shooters of the time.

Aesthetically, the game does look quite nice for a very grey & beige-colored FPS of the time (of which there is no shortage). It doesn't look quite as hideously aged as Resistance 1 or Haze with low textured environments, but the bad FOV and framerate do get in the way of enjoying the good texture work. The music is quite good, I will say, and there were several moments that I actually stopped to think just how well done the orchestral score was (which is a real rarity for me in a game like this). The voice acting, however, is much more subpar. While there are some well executed jokes and banter (and racial epithets :/ ) here and there among your crew, a LOT of the main cast's VA work just sounds really phoned in like they don't even care. There was no shortage of instances where I thought, "Really? THAT was the take you decided to keep for that line?" for voice lines with a really shocking lack of emotional energy behind them. Col. Radec, however, really knocks it out of the park. It's no surprise he was picked for PlayStation All-Stars, frankly, as (aside from the other characters just being intensely unmemorable and generic) his voice performance is really the only one that feels that has any nuance behind it.

Verdict: Not Recommended. If you got to this point and thought the verdict would be any different than it is, then you may want to check your reading comprehension skills XD. Mechanically, Killzone 2 is a fine shooter, but nothing truly special that something newer or older can't pretty easily surpass (It's very much a "We have Halo at home"-type affair). Narratively, however, Killzone 2 is a truly wretched piece of literature. Unless you want a really good window into the racial/military politics of the late Bush-era, this narrative is good for nothing but leaving in the dustbin of history, and it'll do nothing but make you feel disgusted and filthy for taking part in such joyful racial violence. Your time and emotional energy are worth far better than this, and it's a small blessing that these games have never been ported to more modern hardware.

Post by **MrPopo** » Sun Oct 20, 2024 5:53 pm

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5

Metaphor is the latest game from Atlus, and in a departure, is a completely new IP. It's a fantasy RPG that pulls many systems from SMT and Persona but adjusts them to be its own thing. And it manages to keep the runtime down; my playthrough was 60 hours, compared to the 80-100 of a Persona run.

The world of Metaphor is a fantasy world with a development just prior to the real life industrial revolution. Nine races inhabit the world, and these form the basis of the fantastic racism that pervades the world. Magic is available through devices called igniters, and their availability (or lack thereof) is a source of stratification in society. And the game kicks off with the king being murdered and a succession crisis beginning, as he has no heirs. But the king has a final card to play; powerful magic he put into place prior to his death causes a proclamation to ring out through the land: whomsoever has the greatest regard of the people by the Day of Heroes would be crowned king. Enter our protagonist, who joins the race to be king.

Combat utilizes the press-turn system of various SMT games; you get a certain number of turns, hitting a weakness only uses a turn halfway, while enemies doing hard defenses against you can eat multiple or all your turns. You gain access to multi-character skills which use multiple turns and magic from both characters for some major effect. This is, in fact, your main source of multi-hit magic until the late game. On the character development side, you have a fusion of the Persona system and a FFV style job system. Each character equips an archetype, which gives them a stats boost, a set of elemental weaknesses/resistances, and your moves. The archetypes level up, and you can learn different archetypes over time. You can spend a resource to permanently learn a move from an archetype and equip it to any other, though you only have limited slots. You can't change mid-combat, so you do want to do some planning ahead, but you definitely will want to do some swapping now and then for particular enemy weaknesses or abilities. There are some balance problems; it costs enough time and resources that you sort of need to plan on a handful of archetypes for each character, which tends to leave the support ones on the side.

The game utilizes Persona's time management system; during the day you can run around and do various things, but certain impactful activities will move the clock forward. You have afternoon and evening to do stuff, though doing a dungeon will also burn your evening. Your primary activities will be doing dungeons, leveling up social links (which unlock archetypes and move slots), and leveling up social stats (required to level up certain social links). They've balanced things pretty well; as long as you are trying to make reasonable decisions and move everything forward you should be able to max everything and do all the sidequests with time to spare before the end of the game. It's nice to be able to go in blind and not have to stress about a schedule.

Overall, Metaphor is an iterative step in Altus's RPG design. The story is engaging, and the characters are well portrayed. There's a lot of little bits of quality of life compared to previous entries, making this the easiest playing of any of the modern Atlus games. And the game even finally gives you access to one of those skills that give you extra press turns that the nasty bosses have. You only get to use it once per battle, but it is oh so sweet when you do. If you've liked Atlus's other work I highly recommend this one.

Post by **prfsnl_gmr** » Mon Oct 21, 2024 3:23 pm

1. Chico and The Magic Orchard DX (Switch)
2. Dusk ‘82 (Switch)
3. Dusk (Switch)
4. Rock Boshers DX (Switch)
5. Metal Slug 4 (Neo Geo)
6. Bleed 2 (Switch)
7. Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS)
8. Mighty Gunvolt Burst (3DS)
9. Love 3 (Switch)
10. Mini Mario & Friends: Amiibo Challenge (3DS)
11. Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Switch)
12. Mother 3 (GBA)
13. Princess Peach: Showtime! (Switch)
14. Avenging Spirit (Arcade)
15. Blossom Tales II (Switch)
16. The Fall of Elena Temple (Switch)
17. Finding Teddy II (Switch)
18. Animal Well (Switch)
19. Runner 3 (Switch)
20. Master Key (Switch)
21. Gargoyle’s Quest II - The Demon Darkness (NES)
22. Gargoyle’s Quest II - The Demon Darkness (GB)
23. Demon’s Crest (SNES)
24. Master Key Picross (Switch)
25. Prince of Persia (SNES)
26. Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure (Switch)
27. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch)
28. Soul Blazer (SNES)
29. Swords & Bones 2 (Switch)

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a fine 2D platformer. It’s another Mario game, but more like SMB1 than its predecessors. That said, it has some welcome stylistic throwbacks to SMB2, and it has some really neat new mechanics (e.g., ability badges that let you do things like jump higher, rush off edges, etc., wonder flowers that remix levels drastically in unexpected ways). The game is pretty easy overall, with the only the final hidden level posing much of a challenge (and in a bad, frustrating way, unfortunately). Still, what it lacks in challenge it more than makes up for in fun, which is what matters the most.

Swip! Swip! Swip! Soul Blazer is an early SNES ARPG where you run around hitting stuff with a sword, gaining experience, and leveling up. It’s pretty basic, but there it has an interesting mechanic where you rebuild and repopulate a town as you work through each of the game’s dungeons. You may then return to the town for critical items, upgrades, hints, etc. (Quintet, the game’s developer, also developed Actraiser.) The game is pretty basic, and the graphics and sound are very “early SNES”. Still, it’s good comfort food gaming, and I’m looking forward to playing its successors, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma (and, arguably, The Granstream Saga).

Swords & Bones 2 is a short, retro-styled indie action platformer. Like its predecessor, it’s modeled largely after Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, but it’s much easier than any game in that series. Developed by only two people, it’s definitely a budget title, but its still a lot of fun. There are, apparently, two or three more games in this series available on Steam, and I hope they get ported to the Switch too.

Post by **Note** » Mon Oct 21, 2024 6:38 pm

Nice review of Metaphor Re:Fantazio, popo. This is one of the recent releases that I'm most interested in, so it's good to see it scored high for you. Also, I'm glad that the playing time isn't as long as some of Atlus's other offerings.

Prfsnl, I'm glad you enjoyed Soul Blazer! I really liked it and had a good time with Illusion of Gaia as well. Looking forward to finally playing Terranigma. Perhaps I can get to it next year.

Post by **Markies** » Tue Oct 22, 2024 11:53 pm

Soul Blazer is such a good time! A simple and fun game that always felt like you wanted to do just a little bit more.

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2024!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

1. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
2. Jackal (NES)
***3. Evolution: The World Of Sacred Device (SDC)***
4. Skies Of Arcadia Legends (GCN)
5. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (PS2)
6. Sunset Riders (GEN)
***7. Tactics Ogre (PS1)***
***8. Forza Motorsport (XBOX)***
9. Riviera: The Promised Land (GBA)
***10. Darkstalkers (PS1)***
***11. Splatoon (WiiU)***
12. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising (NSW)
***13. Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball (NES)***
14. 3D Dot Game Heroes (PS3)
***15. Puzzle Kingdoms (Wii)***
16. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall Of The Foot Clan (GB)
17. Steel Empire (GEN)
***18. Super Mario Strikers (GCN)***
19. Evolution 2: Far Off Promise (SDC)
20. The King Of Fighters '95 (PS1)
21. Disgaea 3: Absence Of Justice (PS3)
22. Jade Empire: Limited Edition (XBOX)
23. The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (SNES)
24. Super Smash Bros. For WiiU (WiiU)
***25. Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)***
***26. Ducktales 2 (NES)***
27. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3)
28. Super Paper Mario (Wii)
***29. Valkyrie Profile (PS1)***
***30. Destruction Derby 64 (N64)***
31. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (NSW)
32. Mario Superstar Baseball (GCN)
33. The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB)
***33. Phantasy Star IV (GEN)***
***34. Maximum Pool (SDC)***
35. Pokken Tournament (WiiU)

I beat Pokken Tournament for the Nintendo WiiU this evening!

The WiiU does not have that large of a library, so when I was creating my Wishlist, I was much more open minded than I would say for other consoles. When I came across Pokken Tournament, I decided to give it a try. Even though it has Pokemon that I have never seen before because they had been released in later games, I still considered the game different because of its mechanics. Yes, its a Pokemon game, but it is mostly a fighting game with Pokemon window dressing. So, when I was looking for a long WiiU game, it was the only one that wasn't a game I bought earlier in the year, so I decided to keep my open mind and try it out.

Initially, I didn't think I would like the game as somebody I knew told me he didn't like it and the reviews said it was too hard. Thankfully, I was surprised, but not overwhelmingly. The game was developed by Namco as an Arcade cabinet and it feels very much like one of their Naruto games. You start off the fight in a 3D area, but when you do a big hit, you shift to a 2D plane. Once there, the game very much feels like a traditional fighter. You have jump attacks, combos, guards, grabs and even some counter attacks, so it was very easy for me to get into the flow of the game. You choose your Pokemon and you gain XP after each fight that lets you level up where you can put points into different stats. Even when you lose, you gain XP, so that helped in the difficulty. The game has a simple setting and a unique story, but its not exactly mind blowing in any way.

Unfortunately, the game can be a bit long. You have four areas that you need to fight through and you need to do like 30 battles per area. With only about 16 playable Pokemon, the battles become extremely repetitious. The only difference is how much the computer wants to cheat. Like most fighting games, sometimes the computer decides that it is time to win and there is nothing you can do about it. Also, there is a woman who helps you along and she never shuts up, so that going annoying after a while as well.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Pokken Tournament. It was a bit of a surprise, but I began to really enjoy the battles. It was a bit too much for such a simple concept, but the simple concept was still fun enough. Going through the game with all the Pokemon is a monumental task, but going through it once was fun by itself. If you like fighting games and Pokemon, this was good!

Post by **MrPopo** » Wed Oct 23, 2024 6:31 pm

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5
52. Mechwarrior 5: Clans - PC

MW5: Clans is the standalone follow up to MW5: Mercenaries that puts us in the shoes of the titular Clans, specifically Clan Smoke Jaguar, during Operation Revival. That's right; we're finally back with Clan protags after the MW2 expansion. And, importantly, we have a fully tailored single player campaign, not a bit of procedural faffing about in sight.

The game begins a few months before the fateful jump of the Outbound Light into the Huntress system. You finish your final training and trial of position to join Smoke Jaguar's warrior caste, before the invasion kicks off and you get to bring the glory of the Clan way to the Inner Sphere. Fans of the franchise will recognize several important names and locations; the lore nerds are eating well tonight (minus one minor goof in a cutscene near the end of the game).

The actual combat is a minor iteration on what we got with MW5:M and all its patches. The biggest upgrade is the underwhelming battlemap is replaced with a proper mechanism for controlling your starmates beyond "go shoot that guy I targeted". You can finally get them to reliably take point as you move across the battlefield by giving them move orders ahead of you. It's not perfect by any means; I couldn't find any way to do waypoint chains, and you have a restricted view (which I assume is to keep you from sending them far ahead and screwing with AI stuff). But it's still a nice improvement. Otherwise, it's the same level of stomping and shooting. One thing I did notice is that even though you have night vision, they never give any night missions, a weird oversight.

Since you are part of a state military, you don't have the same economy as Mercs. Repairs are free, and only gated by the amount of technicians you have and their skill. There is a currency for purchasing chasses and weapons, but it's far more plentiful than you need, especially since the first of any chassis is free. You're really only going to do heavy spending near the end when you need to double to quintuple up on the assaults. Instead of salvaging full weapons, you salvage components which the scientists can use as a raw material in research to give you incremental upgrades to pieces of gear. And finally, you have experience for both pilots and machines. Machine experience lets you perform tweaks like squeezing out a bit of extra speed or turning radius, while pilot skills improve different statistics. Unlike MW5:M's automatic skill advancement, here you get to pick and choose. And each pilot has a unique set of four skills plus two shared skills. So one pilot might be better suited for missile boats, while another wants energy boats.

The game is about 15 hours to get through, with a nice spread of missions. Some of the maps are quite huge, and the designers did a good job of selling you as part of some of the noteworthy and large battles of the invasion. And a few of the biomes are quite beautiful to behold. It's clear they took all the lessons they learned from feedback on MW5:M and its DLC and really came forward to deliver the game fans have wanted. I look forward to seeing what sorts of DLC they add.

Post by **MrPopo** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 1:01 am

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

First 50:

51. Metaphor: ReFantazio - PS5
52. Mechwarrior 5: Clans - PC
53. Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred - PC

Vessel of Hatred is the expansion for Diablo 4 that follows up on the ending of the base game. Mephisto's soulstone is out there, and you need to find it before it consumes its holder and unleashes the Lord of Hatred upon Sanctuary. It consists of one new zone and one new class, as well as a general rebalance of things.

The zone revisits Act 3 of Diablo 2, and you'll meet some familiar characters in the course of completing it. The ending actually kind of sneaks up on you; the final boss doesn't quite feel like a final boss, and you still have campaign quests after beating him. But these quests are to teach you about the endgame activities, like doing Whispers for the Tree or doing Helltides. There's actually a bunch of different end game activities for building your gear that have been added over time, so this is nice for returning players who haven't kept up with all the seasons since the base game's release.

The new class is the Spiritborn, whose class fantasy is channeling powers from four different animal spirits. The visuals are reminiscent of D3's Monk, but with a lot of build diversity. It generally behooves you to specialize in the skills of one of the four spirits, as the skills for a given spirit emphasize a different aspect of gameplay. Gorilla is your tank class and brings back a thorns playstyle like D3's Crusader had available. Jaguar is your attack speed, while Centipede is poison-based. Finally, Eagle is the one with some projectile attacks and the most mobility. You don't have to go all in on a single aspect, but you still will want to pick a primary one to be for your main attack loop. It's a pretty fun class, as it feels like it has the most options for you to have a character that feels right, whereas the other classes are a bit more pigeonholed.

Compared to the expansions for D2 and D3, it feels like D4's has a bit less meat on its bones. There's not a lot of revelations about the nature of the world compared to the other two, and the stakes of the final fight don't feel as high. The one thing it does do is admit that there will be no end to the battle between Sanctuary and Hell, and everything the player characters do is just a holding action for the next generation.

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 3:32 am

Partridge Senpai's 2024 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
* indicates a repeat

1~50

51. Adventures of Lolo (Famicom)
52. Adventures of Lolo 2 (NES)
53. Adventures of Lolo II (Famicom)
54. Adventures of Lolo 3 (NES)
55. Kickle Cubicle (NES)
56. Adventures of Lolo (GB)
57. Cocoron (Famicom)
58. The Darkness (PS3)
59. Haze (PS3)
60. Animaniacs (GB)
61. Lair (PS3)
62. Bionic Commando (PS3)
63. Donkey Kong Land (GB)
64. Darkwing Duck (NES)
65. Donkey Kong Land III (GBC)
66. Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB)
67. Metroid II (GB) *
68. Pokemon: Brilliant Diamond (Switch)
69. Eggerland (FDS)
70. Eggerland: Meikyuu no Fukkatsu (Famicom)
71. Eggerland: Souzou he no Tabidachi (FDS)
72. Marvelous: Mouhitotsu no Takarajima (SFC)
73. Legendary Starfy (GBA) *
74. Legendary Starfy 2 (GBA)
75. Tales of the Abyss (PS2) *
76. Tales of the Tempest (DS)
77. Tales of Eternia (PS1)
78. Nier: Replicant (PS3)
79. Tales of Symphonia (PS3) *
80. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (PS3)
81. Tales of Zestiria (PS3)
82. Tales of Berseria (PS3)
83. Gargoyle's Quest II (Famicom)
84. Bionic Commando: Rearmed (Steam)
85. Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
86. Resistance 2 (PS3)
87. Killzone 2 (PS3)

88. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3)

Given that it’s the spoopy month and I recently finally nabbed a copy of this, I figured it was perfect timing to go through one of the handful of Castlevania games I’ve not yet played through. I’ve heard mixed things about this game for many years but never given it (or any of the 3D Castlevanias, truth be told) a shot, so I was excited to finally form my own opinions on it. It took me about 20-ish hours to finish the Japanese version of the game on real hardware while getting all of the special upgrade gems.

Lords of Shadow is a tale about the titular villains. Our hero, Gabriel, is a paladin in a holy order sent on a mission to take down these extremely powerful demons and reestablish the connection between man and heaven that’s been letting monsters run amok. Overcome with hatred and misery since his wife was murdered, he’s been told that these Lords of Shadow hold pieces of a mask that will allow him to raise the dead. On a mission for both the order and himself, he sets off to parts unknown.

LoS’s story is nothing incredible, but I still liked it fairly well. It’s something of a minimalist story, in a sense, as a very significant amount of the story regarding Gabriel and his emotions/inner thoughts are given to us via narration between stages (narrated by one of his comrades, Zobek). The plot that you experience through gameplay is action packed and has some really cool boss fights, set pieces, and villain monologues, sure, but we don’t get a ton of character information from them. Putting that aspect of the narrative principally delivered by a somewhat unreliable narrator is a very interesting creative choice that I don’t think is exactly the cleanest one, but I thought it worked well enough, nonetheless. The story of Gabriel’s tragic descent into further and further despair and rage as the tale progresses isn’t exactly the most impressive writing of the console generation (let alone the series), but it weaves a good story dripping with atmosphere that I quite liked regardless. Far from perfect or a primary selling point, sure, but I think it serves its intended purpose very well as a companion for the action at hand.

The action at hand, as it were, is pretty commonly called a God of War clone because that’s pretty straightforwardly what it is XD. Grabriel’s battlecross is a very blatant copy of Kratos’s Blades of Athena, and the way that you’ve got upgrades to find in your relatively linear stages are all pages right out of God of War’s book. From your square & triangle combos to the quick-time events to perform executions on enemies and bosses, the gameplay here will be eminently familiar to anyone who’s played any of the older style God of War games.

There are a *few* things to help distinguish this from God of War, of course. While we do have the ledge jumping and such that GoW has, there’s a higher emphasis on traditional platforming here than God of War tends to have, and there’s also a much higher emphasis on puzzles too (though the game thankfully gives you the option to skip them if you’re not interested in them, at the cost of an EXP reward). You can use EXP gained from solving puzzles and killing enemies to unlock new combos, and you can even parry enemy hits if you time your blocks well enough, but neither was never something I bothered with much. I stuck almost exclusively to your basic combos, and I thought the game was plenty fun and challenging with that~.

The game’s early parts are a bit too slowly paced for their own good, and some of the early bosses (especially the Lycan Lord) are easily some of the hardest in the game for my money, but outside of that, it’s all very competently put together. While it’s far from the most original thing in terms of gameplay, it executes on its inspirations very well and stands aside things like God of War very comfortably if you’re a fan of that kind of 3D brawling gameplay.

Aesthetically, they really knock it out of the park. For starters, the music is really nice, and the Japanese dub is really well done too. They even brag on the back of the box that Hideo Kojima was a significant part of the localization process, and with a localization this good, I guess I can’t blame them! X3. As for graphics, even playing this on the original hardware all these years later, this game still looks very good too. From the sick as hell monster designs to the beautiful vistas over stages and landscapes, this game’s visuals have aged quite well compared to many other action games from that console generation.

On a personal note, I also appreciated how the violence in this is dialed back a fair bit from how hard God of War was going by the PS3-era, because God of War 3 goes so far on the outright torture you do to your enemies that it makes me physically sick ^^;. That was never something I had to deal with here, and it’s something I feel is worth praising. That’s not to say the game isn’t gory or violent, as it absolutely is, but I feel it strikes a more tasteful balance compared to Kratos’s games.

Verdict: Recommended. If you prefer your action games to be a bit more technical like a Devil May Cry, or you prefer your platformers to be more fluid and momentum-based like a Mario 64, then you’ll probably not really find what you’re looking for here. However, if you’re interested in a well put together 3D brawler with a nice Castlevania coat of paint on it, then this fits the bill very nicely. It’s not the best game ever, but it’s a very solidly put together game that I really enjoyed my time with, and if you’re into this kind of game, then I reckon you’ll be well satisfied by it too~.

89. Jak & Daxter (PS2)

This is a game I briefly played many years ago but never stuck with long enough to finish it. As big a fan as I am of 3D platforming games and collectathons, it was still something I just never managed to wrap back around to through all these years. However, my wife recently played through this and had a fairly negative opinion of it, and that put me back on the hunt to find a copy locally so I could give it a try as well. After finding a copy, it made for a great couple’s activity to do together on one of her day’s off~. It took me around 7-ish hours to complete the Japanese version of the game on real hardware getting all 101 power cells.

Jak & Daxter is the story of the titular duo. Exploring around the forbidden misty island off the coast of where they live, they run across a mysterious and dangerous-looking band of foes who seem bent on wreaking some kind of havoc. As they attempt to flee, Daxter is knocked into a large pool of dark eco, and it turns him into some weird little ferret thing. After escaping back home, the Green Sage berates them for their idiocy in going to the island and getting Daxter transformed, and the two set out on an adventure to try and figure out just what’s going on as well as try and turn Daxter back to normal.

It's a perfectly fine story for a collectathon. Much like a game like Banjo-Kazooie, it’s got a lot of miscellaneous characters who populate the world only existing to give you some funny dialogue and a quest for a power cell (this game’s power star/jiggy equivalent) or two, but they have fully voiced dialogue here! X3. The villain’s motive is pretty much “just evil just because”, but these kinds of games hardly need to have all that powerful or strong a story. It sets up and carries the action just fine, and the gags are entertaining bits in between the wider gameplay sections (and a pretty strong Japanese dub makes it so this version is just as much silly fun as the English version in that regard, though I certainly wish the game had subtitles regardless :/ ).

Those wider gameplay sections, however, leave a lot to be desired and really show their ages as *such* an early PS2 game. To sum it up as succinctly as I can: The game’s controls are just bad. Jak’s movement is shockingly clumsy and slippery given that these are the same guys that put together the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games (all of which I’ve played and found far superior to this control-wise). On top of the awkward movement and temperamental auto-ledge grabbing mechanics, the game also has a *very* finicky double jump system. You have a *very* brief window to get your second jump in compared to most other games, and this means that you’ll end up falling to your death quite a lot as you misjudge jump after jump and land in a bottomless pit. It ultimately just feels like the game is eating inputs and not registering them at all, and my opinion that it’s not a too small input window and instead is just the game eating inputs was increased significantly after all of the normal attack inputs the game also just didn’t register at all for me :/

These bad controls just make all the other problems the game has even worse. The level design is the biggest casualty here, as there are tons of stages that are very maze-like with tons of similar-looking environments, so it’s often very easy to lose your way or not even realize you’ve missed an area completely. It’s not quite Earthworm Jim 3D bad, but it reminded me a lot of a game like the first Yooka-Laylee in just how frustrating it often was to find my way around. The game is also pretty averse to checkpoints, and you’ve only got 3 hits between you and death while health pickups are very uncommon. All of this would be frustrating to deal with in a normal game, but this game controlling so poorly just makes dealing with all that crap even worse than it already is, and it makes for an experience I can best describe as exhausting rather than fun.

The design of the side quests and activities you’ve gotta do to collect those power cells is far from the best too. Granted, this is another point like the level design where it’s not like Naughty Dog had made a game like this before, so I can at least cut them a little slack here. That said, games in this genre had been incredibly commonplace for the past 5+ years when this came out, so it’s certainly not like they were pioneering the genre or starved for good examples to take inspiration from. While awkward platforming segments and combat challenges that are both too long and too devoid of checkpoints are of course a problem, the biggest sins committed are in the awful speeder sections.

The game REALLY loves the vehicle sections, and there are frankly far too many of them for how much of a pain they are to control and how clumsily constructed and mean the sections themselves are. There are so, SO many speeder sections where it felt like they were leaning on the infinite lives as a crutch, because you’d just have to know what was coming to actually be able to both survive *and* complete your objective. The cherry on top of that is, of course, that backtracking to the start of this section is never quick and never convenient, so even retrying can be far more of a pain than it really needs to be. I’ve not played Jak II yet, but given how much I know that game loves vehicle sections and hates checkpoints, there’s no wonder why people say it’s one of the hardest games on PS2 XD

Aesthetically, the game is pretty good, but it definitely shows its age. It’s got the issue a lot of games of the early-/mid-3D era have where character models are quite high detail and fluidly animated but the environments around them don’t look nearly as high quality, but that’s hardly the gravest sin in the world given just how common that is. The music is quite good and the character designs are nice and memorable too. None of it is anything to really write home about these days (and Jak is an incredibly boring protagonist compared to someone as full of personality as Crash), but it’s not hard to see why people were so smitten by this back in 2001.

Verdict: Not Recommended. This is far from the worst 3D platformer I’ve played, of course, but that bar is so amazingly low that this is just damning with faint praise. Given the pedigree of the studio behind it, Jak & Daxter has no good reason to be as poorly put together as it is, particularly with its controls, and I have little doubt that people would’ve been far more deservingly critical of this game had it not come out so early in the PS2’s lifespan. You may play this game and enjoy/tolerate it okay as I did, but your time is frankly just worth better than this. You can find no shortage of far better controlling and put together 3D platformers than this on the N64 and PS1, and you’d be very right to do so rather than indulging in this mediocre exercise in re-learning all the dos and don’ts of a genre that already had these problems solved for years.

90. Kileak: The DNA Imperative (PS1)

“KILEAK, The Blood” as it’s known in Japanese, this game and its sequel have been on my radar since I played through and quite enjoyed the last entry in Genki’s trio of early PS1 sci-fi mech FPS games, Beltlogger 9, last year. I finally happened across a copy at Book Off recently, and I couldn’t buy it fast enough X3. In total fairness, I had read in multiple places that Beltlogger 9 (despite coming out less than 2 years after this first entry) was head and shoulders better than its two predecessors, but that knowledge alone could never stop me from hunting the game down and finally giving it a try. It took me a bit over 4 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.

Kileak’s story is one very clearly inspired by a love of sci-fi horror movies like The Thing and Alien. In the near future of 2038, a research base at the south pole goes dormant when a scientist there goes mad and starts doing genetic experiments on a mysterious specimen they found while digging under the complex. A UN peacekeeping force is sent down to investigate, but their helicopter is shot down by surface-to-air missiles en route. You play as Coda, one of the two survivors, who manages to crawl out of the wreckage in his human-piloted mech and make his way towards the enigmatic and dangerous South Base, ready to face whatever perils may await him.

A PS1 game so early that it’s published by Sony Music Entertainment (because Sony Computer Entertainment just didn’t exist yet), Kileak as a game is very heavily a relic of its time, and that carries on to the story as well (in both ways good and bad depending on what your particular tastes are). The manual has pages and pages of backstory on the state of the world and how it got to this point from an alternate 1990 as well as info on the creatures in the base and the characters in the story. Heck, it even has headshots of the dev team complete with bios in the back! XD

All that said, while the story and how its presented, all in 3D and FMV cutscenes with real human faces and voice acting, would’ve been very impressive for the time, but it comes off as a bit meager and undercooked these days. The actual content of the story fails to stand on its own, at least compared to its big sibling Beltlogger 9, and just ends up being a cool historical artefact rather than a cool sci-fi narrative in its own right. It’s got a lot of early 3D graphical fun and campy presentation that are iconic of the time, which is nice at least, but it probably won’t be of much interest to any outside of the most die-hard sci-fi/horror fans who are curious about the older experiments in the genre.

Something similar can be said for the gameplay, frankly. Whereas a late 1996 game like Beltlogger 9 has verticality to its stages and large arenas, Kileak 1 is quite literally a “corridor shooter”. The game’s 15 stages have very little in the way of variety, and two levels are even downright identical aside from their graphical presentation. You go through long hallways between tiny rooms with little mechanical ability, let alone actual room, to actually dodge the projectiles from the game’s enemies. This *does* end up leading to an almost survival horror type experience, where health, energy, and ammo are such precious resources that you’ve gotta deal them out wisely, as you only have so much available to you and fighting enemies can rarely be done without taking at least a little damage, but that’s honestly hyping up a very flat and flawed system way too much with flowery interpretation.

The game has 8 guns you can swap between, but *all* of them are found in optional (and sometimes secret) areas, and you’ll REALLY need those to survive to the point that it hardly feels very fair when you’re having your head kicked in by undodgeable projectiles just because you didn’t explore hard enough to find the secret gun in the previous area that’d give you the ammo you need to actually kill the monsters on the following floor. Sure, it’s a really cool mechanic that you can use your energy, secondary health that slowly ticks down and can be refilled at stations in each level, as ammo with several guns, but it’s just too underdeveloped a system to actually mean much. Like with the story, the gameplay here is really going to only appeal to people very historically interested in the early days of console FPS games and old sci-fi/horror games, and there really isn’t much for others to find of interest here.

The aesthetics are similarly going to appeal mainly to a very specific type of person. The graphics are VERY early 1995 3D, and they have an undeniable charm as such. The music is the stand-out star of the show here, imo, as there’s a lot of weird, experimental-feeling musical choices here. On one end of the spectrum, some tunes feel like they’d be right as home in Star Fox 64 or Ocarina of Time, meanwhile on the other side of the spectrum you’ve got one level’s soundtrack being just a heartbeat the entire time. It definitely is described just as accurately as “interesting” just as much as it’s described as actually “good”, but it’s certainly memorable!

Verdict: Not Recommended. To be totally fair to Kileak, while this hardly impresses next to Doom (which was over a year older than this), it’s not like there was much else in the way of *console* shooters at the time to compare against this. As mediocre and kinda boring as Kileak is today, I have trouble being *too* unkind to it given how it’s something of a pioneer in it’s genre. That said, as much as I did have fun with my little journey through South Base, this is a game I just really can’t recommend in good conscience to someone else unless they’re largely only interested in the historical aspect of things like I am. Most people would only see this as a clunky, boring relic of a game best left in a museum rather than played in your console, and I frankly find that a hard argument to push back against. I didn’t dislike my time with it, but this game just shows its age far too hard to really be worth your time in 2024.

Post by **Markies** » Thu Oct 24, 2024 9:17 pm

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2024!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

1. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
2. Jackal (NES)
***3. Evolution: The World Of Sacred Device (SDC)***
4. Skies Of Arcadia Legends (GCN)
5. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (PS2)
6. Sunset Riders (GEN)
***7. Tactics Ogre (PS1)***
***8. Forza Motorsport (XBOX)***
9. Riviera: The Promised Land (GBA)
***10. Darkstalkers (PS1)***
***11. Splatoon (WiiU)***
12. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising (NSW)
***13. Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball (NES)***
14. 3D Dot Game Heroes (PS3)
***15. Puzzle Kingdoms (Wii)***
16. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall Of The Foot Clan (GB)
17. Steel Empire (GEN)
***18. Super Mario Strikers (GCN)***
19. Evolution 2: Far Off Promise (SDC)
20. The King Of Fighters '95 (PS1)
21. Disgaea 3: Absence Of Justice (PS3)
22. Jade Empire: Limited Edition (XBOX)
23. The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (SNES)
24. Super Smash Bros. For WiiU (WiiU)
***25. Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)***
***26. Ducktales 2 (NES)***
27. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3)
28. Super Paper Mario (Wii)
***29. Valkyrie Profile (PS1)***
***30. Destruction Derby 64 (N64)***
31. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (NSW)
32. Mario Superstar Baseball (GCN)
33. The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB)
***33. Phantasy Star IV (GEN)***
***34. Maximum Pool (SDC)***
35. Pokken Tournament (WiiU)
36. Sonic Advance (GBA)

I beat Sonic Advance for the GameBoy Advance this evening!

As a kid, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first Genesis game I ever owned, so that was a game that I played constantly. I knew the ins and outs of almost the entire game. Surprisingly, I never beat it because the final boss is absolutely horrible and I didn't trudge my way through it until I discovered the Backloggery. With that in mind, I don't have a lot of affection for the Sonic series. I like the Genesis games, but they aren't some of my favorite games besides Sonic 2. Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast was...interesting. So, when I bought a GameBoy Advance, I realized that I could relive the glory years of 2D Sonic with Sonic Advance. So, I decided to pick it up and I was looking for a short and simple game to play on my GBA, I thought it would be perfect.

Sonic Advance perfectly highlights what I love and hate about the series. There are seven stages in the game and the first four are fantastic. You have some beautiful graphics, lovely music and that fantastic 2D Sonic gameplay that is so iconic. It really does feel like you are stepping back in time and playing a Genesis game all over again because the stages and feel are exactly the same. Obviously, there are some upgrades here and there, but they don't change much of the game. Sonic has good momentum and some good level design, so you don't feel punished for going too fast. It's an enjoyable time and I was amazed at how long it took me to die for the first time.

Unfortunately, the second part of the game is where the evils of Sonic came to show their faces. You fight a boss underwater where it is hard to get air, which is a very annoying part of the series. Then, you have sprawling stages that go on forever with no sense of direction along with enemy and spike placement that is incredibly mean and unfair. Finally, you get to the final boss where you can only hit him for a split second while every other part damages you whenever you try to attack. Obviously, all of this is doable, but it really ruins the mood from the first part of the game.

Overall, I still mostly enjoyed Sonic Advance, but that second part really left a bad taste in my mouth. I guess that perfectly describes my feelings about the Sonic series. When it is done right, it is an enjoyable experience like no other. When it is done wrong, it is a frustrating experience. Sonic Advance has both of them, but at least the good outweighs the bad.

Post by **prfsnl_gmr** » Sun Oct 27, 2024 3:30 pm

. Chico and The Magic Orchard DX (Switch)
2. Dusk ‘82 (Switch)
3. Dusk (Switch)
4. Rock Boshers DX (Switch)
5. Metal Slug 4 (Neo Geo)
6. Bleed 2 (Switch)
7. Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS)
8. Mighty Gunvolt Burst (3DS)
9. Love 3 (Switch)
10. Mini Mario & Friends: Amiibo Challenge (3DS)
11. Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Switch)
12. Mother 3 (GBA)
13. Princess Peach: Showtime! (Switch)
14. Avenging Spirit (Arcade)
15. Blossom Tales II (Switch)
16. The Fall of Elena Temple (Switch)
17. Finding Teddy II (Switch)
18. Animal Well (Switch)
19. Runner 3 (Switch)
20. Master Key (Switch)
21. Gargoyle’s Quest II - The Demon Darkness (NES)
22. Gargoyle’s Quest II - The Demon Darkness (GB)
23. Demon’s Crest (SNES)
24. Master Key Picross (Switch)
25. Prince of Persia (SNES)
26. Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure (Switch)
27. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch)
28. Soul Blazer (SNES)
29. Swords & Bones 2 (Switch)
30. Underground Blossom (iOS)
31. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (Xbox)

Underground Blossom is a narrative “escape room” game from Rusty Lake, my favorite developers of “escape room” games. (They developed the brilliant Rusty Lake Hotel and every game in the Cube Escape series, among others.) This game continues the loose Twin Peaks-inspired narrative from previous games, and in it, you proceed from one subway station to another, each of which correspondents to a different era in a dead woman’s life. It’s just as surreal as previous entries, and the tactile puzzles are just as clever. I enjoyed it and recommend it, along with all the developer’s other games.

Shadow of the Erdtree is the expansion to Elden Ring, my very favorite game. Ever. On any system. It is, basically, just a lot more, more challenging Elden Ring. There are new enemies, items, spells, and most importantly, bosses. The new map is massive and beautiful, and the narrative makes the base game even better (and weirder). I enjoyed it thoroughly, and it took me about 60 hours to slay every god, great enemy, and legend; collect every new item; find all of the collectibles, etc. It was a must play for me, and I loved it even more than I thought I would when I bought it months ago. I am a little sad to leave the Lands Between, and I’m still reeling a bit from the realization that there’s nothing left for me to do there. I left my avatar in the safest, most beautiful place I could find, and I hope he’s happy there.

Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024

Re: Games Beaten 2024