Games Beaten 2014

[emwearz]

It is closer to 20gb. 50gb is the full extractes and installed size, origin gives the reading of 50gb as it downloads and extracts as it goes along.

Stupid system.

[dsheinem]

Dave, did the PC version get a physical release? I had put it on my "when it goes on sale for cheap on Steam" list, but then I heard it's like 50GB download which is... pretty big.

It is on disc…it is Origin only, though. No Steam.

[Luke]

1) Kung Fu NES
2) Altered Beast Genesis
3) Golden Axe Genesis
4) Golden Axe GBA
5) Golden Axe Dreamcast
6) Golden Axe PS2
7) Golden Axe Sega CD
Golden Axe 360
9) Ninja Gaiden xbox
10) Ninja Gaiden NES
11) Cool Spot Genesis
12) The Duel Genesis
13) Pit Fighter Genesis
14) Hard Drvin' Genesis
15) Death Duel Genesis
16) Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis
17) Mutant League Football Genesis
18) TMNT Hyperstone Heist Genesis
19) Streets of Rage Sega CD
20) Streets of Rage 2 Genesis
21) Golden Axe 2 Genesis
22) Sewer Shark Sega CD
23) Chiki Chiki Boys Genesis
24) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Genesis
25) Mega Man 2 NES
26) Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! NES
27) TMNT Fall of the Footclan Gameboy
28) TMNT Something Sewers Gameboy
29) Punch-Out!! Wii
30) Diddy Kong Racing N64
31) StarFox 64 N64
32) StarFox snes
33) Metal Gear nes
34) Mario Superstar Baseball Gamecube
35) Star Wars Rogue Leader Gamecube
36) Super Mario Land 2 Gamecube *new*
37) Duck Tales Gamecube *new*

Generic reviews:

Mario Land 2 is terrific. A bit Mario.3 a bit Mario World, all on the gameboy. Fairly short game but definitely worth a play.

Beat Duck Tales with all hidden treasures, and best ending. Fun times never get old.

[alienjesus]

36) Super Mario Land 2 Gamecube *new*
37) Duck Tales Gamecube *new*

Wow, I never knew those games had a Gamecube port

[Luke]

Gamecube via Gameboy player to clarify.

[MrEco]

Finished Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons a couple days ago. Anyone else play this little gem? I really liked it. Strong story. Interesting gameplay mechanics. And absolutely beautiful (sometimes disturbing) settings that I want to have turned into posters and put up on my wall.

Everything about it resonated memories of Journey and Ico for me. In a good way though, not in a rip-off way. Over all I don't think Brothers was quite as memorable or well done as those two games, but it certainly deserves to stand tall with them as one of my best gaming experiences.

[dsheinem]

Finished Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons a couple days ago. Anyone else play this little gem?

Games Beaten 2014
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - PS3

Yup! A nice little game, though the ending made me mad

[wclem]

8. Southpark Stick of Truth

Loved every second of it, worth getting new. Not a hardcore rpg by any means but fun still to play. Actually this would make a good entry level rpg for someone who has not experienced them yet. Heavy Paper Mario elements.

I did see some of the bugs that people complained about but it really did not effect the game at all. If it effects your enjoyment of the game then you have seriously high standards for games in general. As complicated as games are getting we are gonna see bugs to some extent everywhere. This game was had minor flaws but the fun factor was really high to counter anything negative.

I will say this, if you are not a Southpark fan or do not enjoy it then you want to steer clear of this game. Do not even waste your time if the show offends you in any way. this game hammers about any thing you can think of!

[alienjesus]

1. Kirby's Epic Yarn Wii
2. To The Moon Christmas Special PC
3. Super Mario 3D World Wii U
4. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD Wii U
5. Chiki Chiki Boys Mega Drive
6. World of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Mega Drive
7. Metal Gear PSVita
8. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake PSVita
9. Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy 3DS
10. Akai Katana 360
11. Metal Gear Solid GBC
12. Atelier Totori Plus: The Adventurer of Arland PSN *NEW*
13. Tearaway PSN *NEW*



Another 2 for the list, getting a bit of use out of my new PSVita. Spoilered for length.

Atelier Totori Plus: The Adventurer of Arland

Atelier Totori was a game I pretty much loved from start to finish. I might have some difficulty explaining why, but I'll give it a go.

Atelier Totori is a weird game - it doesnt do an awful lot to distinguish itself from a lot of generic RPGs. It has a pretty basic battle system where your guys get one attack a turn. Team-mates only have one or two special attacks, and Totori herself is pretty useless outside of using items for most of the game. The enemy variety is a bit shallow too.

Yet, the battle system works nicely. Your team mates are your main offensive and defensive force (they can even add attacks to Totori's, or leap in front of her to stop her being hit - very useful as she's by far the frailest character in the game), whilst Totori is a utility - items are a pretty big deal in this game - they're pretty much the only way of healing, buffing, and cheaply attacking multiple enemies, aswell as adding elemental effects like spells in other games. In addition, the alchemy system for crafting items means 2 identical items may be very different in terms of effects depending on the qualities of the ingredients you choose. This even applies to the weapons and armour, as you choose the materials to create the ores and cloth used to make them.

The story of the game is simple, and not very big in scale - become an adventurer, explore the world, maybe find your missing mother. I say maybe, because almost nothing in this game is compulsory - missing a few things will get you the bad ending or end your game earlier than usual, but there's very little the game asks of you in terms of 'you must go here and do this'. The game is also on a time limit, so it's not really possible to everywhere and do anything. This is refreshing to me though, because it means there is some real choices to make - you cant do everything, but you can do anything pretty much.

One thing you do have to do to progress is upgrade your adventurer license, but even this has options - it can be upgraded in 4 areas, with the accumulated total adding together to determine your rank. These 4 areas are questing (completing small tasks assigned at the guild, such as kill 5 enemies or craft 5 healing salves), battling (kill a certain number of enemies, kill bosses (almost all optional again)), exploring (visit new places and find landmarks) or crafting (mix up new items using alchemy). This lets you focus on the stuff you want to do and still make progress.

At the end of the game, stuff you've chosen to do can influence the game and give up to 11 different endings. They're simple, but it's nice that the game carries your choices through right to the ending.

The story is pretty light, the characters are a bit cliche, but not too much to be unbearable. The voice acting generally wasnt that bad, although one or two characters are obnoxious. I found myself really drawn in by the character interactions too, basic as they were. There's a few moments of fan service, but it's not too creepy or common compared to similar modern JRPGs which seem to thrive on it.

So overall, although none of the systems in Atelier Totori are particularly remarkable on their own, they just added up into a game that I found totally refreshing. Having struggled to play through a few RPGs recently, I was starting to worry if my tastes were changing and they weren't for me any more. This game proved that theory wrong, and I'm delighted about it. I'm definitely considering getting the sequel Atelier Meruru for Vita too, and hoping that the Vita port of the previous game in the series, Atelier Rorona, makes it westward aswell.

Tearaway

Here's a game that people claim is a must play on Vita. I liked it. I was also pretty disappointed by it.

Tearaway is charming, simple and short. All of those things are positives AND negatives for this game in my opinion. The storybook presentation was nice, and the paper aesthetic was quite pretty. However, I found it talked down to me a bit much - I've played plenty of kid friendly games - Lego series, Kirby, Pokémon etc etc, but this was the first one where I felt I was being treated like I was stupid, and that this wasn't a game anyone could play. Of course, it is, but the game definitely seems to ignore the fact that a lot of the audience is probably going to be older than the demographic they're 'talking' to - particularly given the niche audience for the expensive Vita. I also felt like the paper aesthetic was pretty, and I loved the colours, but oddly enough it didn't feel papery enough to me. There werent enough papery sound effects, things were too smooth (when things broke, there wasnt the frayed edges you normally got on paper) and othe rminor things. It LOOKS like a paper world, but if feels kinda plastic, oddly enough.

The gameplay in Tearaway is simple too. You don't even learn to jump until the end of level 2. Theres some nice mechanics, and a few new abilities you gain as you go. However, they just feel underutilised. You learn to roll into a ball, roll through a few pipes and into a couple of mouse holes, and then it's basically never used again. It could've been the perfect opportunity to throw a challenging and fun assault course at you. Hell, the Vita has tilt controls, which were annoyingly forced on platforming elements near the end of the game. A more fun use of those would be to roll your paper ball buddy through an assault course. It just never happens - lets fight more scraps. do simple platforming and poke the rear touch screen (which always felt terrible and inaccurate to me) some more. The same goes for later sections - the walls with blocks that move in and out when you press buttons could have had some fun puzzles and some complex finger gymnastics, but nothing. The accordion that lets you create gusts of wind could have been involved insome interesting puzzles and mini games, but nope, all it does is suck in enemies and spin fans to turn on machines. The pig sections are fun, but they're mindless - some sort of challenge with this could have added some fun variety. The mechanics are there, but nothing INTERESTING ever seemed to happen with them.

These extra uses of the mechanics could have helped the games length too. It was short, but I was fine with it ending when it did, even if I liked it OK. By the end it was clear that not a lot new was going to be bought out. Had it been, I'd've probably been happy to play for twice the length of the games current 5 hour span. The credits to the game almost felt longer than the actual game (no joke, they were 20 minutes long).

The game has it's charm. I liked seeing my face in the sun, I liked taking pictures, I liked crafting OK, although I feel it'd have worked better on a different type of touch screen and it was a little over-utilised. I didn;t dislike anythign about it, it just never lived up to the stuff it seemed to be setting out to do.

However, there were 2 moments in the game where it felt like I could get behind it. The first was in stage 2, where the forest comes alive and the drum beat in the soundtrack builds as you pass by. This worked wonderfully with the 'drum the rear touchpad' to jump mechanic this level employs. I genuinely thought I was in for something special there. The second moment is the chase through Wendigo valley which gets ever more chaotic and frantic as you progress. This level felt impressive, and hectic, and fun.

Overall, it's a good little game, but it just felt exceedingly generic. Pretty, but underwhelming.

Next up: Something out of these: Perfect Dark, Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Gravity Rush and 999: Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors.

[Luke]

1) Kung Fu NES
2) Altered Beast Genesis
3) Golden Axe Genesis
4) Golden Axe GBA
5) Golden Axe Dreamcast
6) Golden Axe PS2
7) Golden Axe Sega CD
Golden Axe 360
9) Ninja Gaiden xbox
10) Ninja Gaiden NES
11) Cool Spot Genesis
12) The Duel Genesis
13) Pit Fighter Genesis
14) Hard Drvin' Genesis
15) Death Duel Genesis
16) Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis
17) Mutant League Football Genesis
18) TMNT Hyperstone Heist Genesis
19) Streets of Rage Sega CD
20) Streets of Rage 2 Genesis
21) Golden Axe 2 Genesis
22) Sewer Shark Sega CD
23) Chiki Chiki Boys Genesis
24) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Genesis
25) Mega Man 2 NES
26) Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! NES
27) TMNT Fall of the Footclan Gameboy
28) TMNT Something Sewers Gameboy
29) Punch-Out!! Wii
30) Diddy Kong Racing N64
31) StarFox 64 N64
32) StarFox snes
33) Metal Gear nes
34) Mario Superstar Baseball Gamecube
35) Star Wars Rogue Leader Gamecube
36) Super Mario Land 2 Gameboy
37) Duck Tales Gameboy
38) Sleeping Dogs 360 *new*

Wow, that last mission is something else. An incredible game that gets tedious, but really makes up for it in the end.