Pikmin 3's main story is finished I will say the same as Foolz, fuck that gold dickhead! Great game that is really fun to experience again and again. I'm currently playing the side stories with Olimar and Louie and having a blast. If you've never played Pikmin and have either a Switch or Wii U then give it a shot. Really fun experience.
Then I took Archie's advice and found a short game to finish, Gone Home. So...
On a side note, I'm bitter as fuck that they traded Factions in exchange for the extra story.
robio said:Managed to finish the Last of Us 2 before the year ended. Good game with great moments, but god damn did this game got bogged down with too much story and too many cinematic cut scenes. The game's pacing is shot to hell until the last quarter of the game when they finally figure out how to advance the story without bringing the game to a halt.
On a side note, I'm bitter as fuck that they traded Factions in exchange for the extra story.
I totally agree. The pacing was just bad and the game should've trimmed most or all of Abby's story. Maybe put it in DLC or part of TLoU3. I miss factions as well because it was a unique multiplayer experience.
travo said:I totally agree. The pacing was just bad and the game should've trimmed most or all of Abby's story. Maybe put it in DLC or part of TLoU3. I miss factions as well because it was a unique multiplayer experience.
I didn't mind Abby's story so much. In fact I think it was a lot more interesting than Ellie's. I think they could have shaved off a lot of the backstory for both of them though or just told it in game rather than more cutscenes. I think they could have made the stories three days each instead of four as well.
Anyway, now I'm debating turning PS+ back on so I can play Factions again. given the age of the game though, I suspect there's not much of a community these days. Then again who knows? Maybe the sequel renewed interest in the original.
I probably wouldn't beat another game before the end of the year.
Gagan said:I beat a 1001 Spikes, all gold skulls, and beating Antarctica to send my 970 out on a solid outing. I was shocked when world 6 ended up being a whole fucking half of the game.
Game is so sick, one of the better platformers I've played in awhile. I would rather have Meat Boy's game feel, but this game probably has actually more interesting levels n challenges. Which brings me to 17 games beaten, with the Doom 4 and Eternal next up on my deck. With some ODST thrown into the mix.
this can't be the last thing I beat. Okay so I beat a 1001 Spikes before my new Pea Sea.
I have since beaten
Doom 4 - It's good, now that I have accepted what Doom 4 is. It's not great, it's nowhere near great, and it sure as fuck isn't classic old school doom. It is a lot closer to what Serious Sam, Pain Killer, and that rubbish ass 2013 Shadow Warrior is. Hard Reset might be another one? Anyway the combat is fun enough, but the game is a bit too easy and care free, and isn't mechanically complex enough to let you sauce, to compensate for an enemy roster that you have basically solved with WASD. Straight up a lot of those enemies can not deal with you, they don't lead shots well enough to get key hits, and priority wise only Barons and Hell Knights warrant that, and Hell Knights become less a threat as you level up through upgrades. The summoner should be a high value target, but HOLY SHIT can you erase them. The level design is also not very good. Like ever. The arenas themselves have their moments, but the overall map navigation has problems. I still think the game is good, and I'd deep dive this if Tomas n I didn't have smugcast plans for Doom Eternal.
Score - 7/10
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM: Eternal - Best combat loop in a single player fps in ages. And I mean fucking ages. As an action/jackson fan, all the cues it borrows from or indirectly borrows from that my mind accepts as Action/jackson tropes are my type of jam. Weak points is a cool addition, the enemy roster is kino, the movement options are that much better, balista boosting, meathook which you can use yo close gaps on enemies, create vertical launches, swing yourself AROUND N LAUNCH YOURSELF!!, its soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. The final boss sucks. In fact all the bosses kind of suck. Well most of them are probably mediocre, so the height of FPS boss battles that aren't from Metroid Prime, but never the less the game is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. Were it not for the fact that I am legally obligated in life to think Nioh 2 is better, since Nioh is better, and thus more Nioh is even betterer, I'd call Doom Eternal the best game of the year. What a huge improvement from Doom 4.
Score - 9/10
Streets of Rage 4 - On the 2nd level, there is a track called "Funky HQ", when that shit played, I knew I was in love. What a fucking godlike soundtrack. Combat is pretty kino. I would like something more of an air game as a dmc gorilla, but i do like how the combo system works. The defensive special system taking your health, but giving you i frames, and being a good way to keep combo chains and mass hits done is sick. You basically play with fire the whole game when you do S-rank runs. Since you should basically always have a whole ass green bar if you are playing blaze, since your special killed your health. Game is sick. Fun in coop too. No online coop tho? Wtf. Some of the patch changes I've read sound wack, but I never got to play the game with blaze having an infinite.
Score - 8/10
Monster Train - I didn't play Slay the SPire. I am told the game is a lot like slay the spire. So its a rogue lite/deck builder game where you get some random cards, and some set cards to start a run. You have to make it to the end of the tracks, with a battle in between. In the next room after you won your battle you can go left or right. One side will have stuff, and the other side will have stuff. So you end up having to choose scenarios like "Do i want to buff my spell cards and erase some cards out my deck (only way to get rid of cards, can't just do them willy nilly) and get money, or do i get more health for my caravan, get artifacts, and duplicate a card". With different variations of those choices. In battle you are protecting your monster train like a tower defense type tingy. THere are 4 floors, with the 4th floor being your engine room. Enemies enter from floor one (tho sometimes can also come in at floor 2 n 3), and deal with your people on floor 1 (or not if there aren't any), and will go up a floor if they don't die, regardless if they kill your cards or not on hit. If they make it to your engine room, they can attack the heart of the train. IE your life points.
So your goal is to of course kill them before that, or weaken them, because yes your engine room can do an attack directed at enemies, cards with low health the engine can obviously kill, bosses on other hand you want to stop. SO bosses what they do is they come in on the final wave, and they will not ascend up a floor, until they kill everyone on the floor they are currently on, and when they kill they eliminate that floor (tho only for the match, and not the full run? That might change as you unlock difficulty levels I think, but I didn't fact check that). You naturally gotta stop them before that, or weaken them so much that your engine room while taking a hit, will at least kill them and win you the battle, as you march on.
Sometimes there will be gimmicks from enemies like they all have haste (can skip a floor when ascending, so go from 1 straight to floor 3), come in with shields, come in with spikes (you hit them, but you also take some slight damage), there is some bomb shit, shit like that. There are these angel shits that come on floors, that can get you bonus coins n shit, but the idea being that you will burn an ember trying to put a card down for the greedy coin get.
So your turn you have ember that dictates what n how many cards you can play. Cards have values anywhere from 1 ember to 4 ember as far as I've seen, default is you get 3 ember per turn. But you can increase that with cards or a buff later. You start the run by picking a starting deck class, and a supporting deck class. Starting deck class has a champion card, which is a 0 value card that is often really strong and can be buffed up for free in some premium ways. But the trade off is obviously out the gate they can be had so obviously you gotta build them up over the course of your run. In battle said ember dictates what you can do n there are strategies built around you feeding yourself minion cards to make your champion stronger, your champion summoning other monsters to make themselves stronger, you pairing your champion with your secondary classes perks where they buff your champion, and etc etc. Artifacts from my understanding have a far bigger role in this game than they do in Slay the SPire (again I didn't play, so this part is hearsay), and by extension have a larger impact on playstyles. They can increase your hearts damage, they can make it so everytime you use a spell card, a random enemy will take damage, they can make it so enemies that come into the train have a 50% chance of getting a status ailment, they can make it so everytime one of your cards gets a kill, they increase their attack strength. It gets wilder than that.
So when you win initially, you will unlock a covenant, and the covenant adds an increased difficulty to the run, and the more you win, the more the covenant levels up. As it levels up, the scenarios start having harder enemies on the train, and new enemy strategies show up. It's neat. I like this game.
Score - 8/10
Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Okay so mini games still kind of wack, but since they make up such a small part of the experience I aint stressin. Combat is interesting, but it's not technically deep. And I don't think it's tactically all that rich either, parry seems pretty cut n dry. Go punisher mode, guy comes at me, i parry move, i delete. Flying enemies actively suck. Using Aerith is cool. The fucking weapon upgrade menu is obnoxious square shit where they pretend its not a basic bitch skill tree, fucking square. Some of the bosses can be fun. I know my thing is to be overly siding on the gameplay as the defining thing I like about a game, the make or break for the game.......................................but HOLY SHIT I love how fucking dumb this game is. It's sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo wonderfully stupid. There is like this gladiator shit going on with a wrestling ring announcer when you fight Hell House, Jesse is a mother fucking simp for ccloud, I love her. The entire Well Market stretch is amazing. That shit is a bore in the original, but in the remake oh my fucking god. My man Cloud sees aerith in her hot ass red dress, and goes full Bollywood love at first sight move where he jaw drops and fire works go off in the background. The whole dance sequence where cloud gets dressed up like a chick is pure kino, Cloud is so fucking hot as a woman. He might actually be the hottest girl in the game. You walk down well market in your fly ass dress, and get objectified, it's awesome. There is like this poet motorcycle guy who needs to do a man on man duel with you for his honor. You fight these phantom fate fuckers who are trying to keep the original FF7 timeline together so its basically like you taking on FF7 canon purist mega fans. You take on the big bad booty daddy himself, and they decided to give absolutely zero fucks for any sort of audio tells by blasting one winged angel way past any sensible decible level. Shit has more clipping than my podcast. I know Tomas, that this makes me an eternal fraud for forgiving this game at this moment, but I can't bring myself to dunk on it like I normally would another game where I didn't care for the gameplay. I just love Jesse too much.
Score - 7/10 Video games are trash
Just finished Where is 2021, which takes me to 50 games (including demos) beaten.
So I guess we started finishing up what we can tonight. What an odd year. That's usually 6-7 years worth of finished games for me. I'm waiting on someone to swoop in and complete more in the last minute.
I started it earlier in the year but I never finished it until now.
So I beat 10 games this year if you include Persona 5 which I beat twice in one year.
Final graph with my games. And my full post on the first page is updated with all the good info. Great job guys, I will take my second place and be happy, Travo is a beast.
Here is a spreadsheet of all games I played this year
As you can see I am in the middle of many games which I so happened to leave ready to beat for the new year! HA!
Quick! Find two short and easy games to beat. You have a little over a week. Do it! Do it NAO!