Recently completed video games

[Patrick R]

Axiom Verge had terrible writing but it was really fun and stylish and one of the few Metroid style games I've ever been able to beat. I had to refer to a walkthrough a couple times when I was lost and traveling around every nook and cranny I'd already explored was getting tedious but for the most part I had fun retreading ground and collecting power-ups I missed. The weapons were really fun too. I mostly stuck with the short-range Kilver because a lot of the enemies were fast and I didn't want to time my projectiles but every once and a while I'd stumble upon an encounter that seemed impossible until I played around with my available weapons.

 

I'm kind of interested going through again and trying to 100% it, see what I missed.

[Tanukitsune]

BUTTERFLY SOUP! 

I don't know how many of you have played Pom Gets Wi-fi, but this is from the same gal and it's about lesbians and baseball and most importantly, on how weird it is to be a teen and how other weirdos will help you along the way...

 

You play a chapter with each of the friends, so you get to know them pretty well.

 

I LITERALLY SQUEED at this games, I made several excited noises that made me glad nobody was around to hear them.

[Henke]

On 1/12/2018 at 5:36 PM, thenexus6 said:

Shadow Tactics - PC - 19 hours - a few normal mostly easy difficulty

 

Boy oh boy this game. It looks and sounds gorgeous, I have never played one of these kind of stealth games, am now a fan.

 

Yeah, Shadow Tactics was great.

 

Seconding the Commandos 2 rec, and adding Satellite Reign. It might look more actiony on the surface, but stealth is also a viable tactic for most missions, as long as you stick mainly with the Hacker and Infiltrator units.

[thenexus6]

On 1/17/2018 at 11:23 AM, Henke said:

 

Yeah, Shadow Tactics was great.

 

Seconding the Commandos 2 rec, and adding Satellite Reign. It might look more actiony on the surface, but stealth is also a viable tactic for most missions, as long as you stick mainly with the Hacker and Infiltrator units.

 

Currently £2.99 on Humble Store, will check it out! 

[thenexus6]

Wolfenstein 2 - PS4

 

Hmm I am mixed on this. I loved TNO and TOB but this felt like a step back in many ways.. gunplay and level design were worse, the constant BJ preaching got boring, the mixed tone with the story, the 1970s exploitation film thing didn't work for me, never did the sassy black woman and the other uninteresting characters.

 

I still had fun killing Nazis in brutal ways, but yeah lacking overall.

[Thyroid]

As part of my ongoing efforts to wrap-up the LucasArts+ oeuvre, I'm just about to wrap-up "Grubbins on Ice," just over seven years—seven goddamn years—after playing the original Costume Quest. Still as adorable and charming as ever.

 

Also, time flies. On a goddamn X-15 fighter jet.

[Patrick R]

I "completed" Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+, which is to say I've completed all the challenges and unlocked everything there is to unlock without paying (though there are 3 badges related to sharing your score on Facebook that I'm ignoring). I've put 11 hours into it but I'll probably keep returning to it for short bursts of play for a long time to come, or at least until I can S-Rank everything.

[Kyir]

I bought Iconoclasts, sat down and played it for 13 hours, straight and now I'm left with the gnawing sensation that I already beat the best game that will come out in 2018.

 

It's good stuff.

[Merus]

On 1/24/2018 at 11:12 PM, Kyir said:

I bought Iconoclasts, sat down and played it for 13 hours, straight and now I'm left with the gnawing sensation that I already beat the best game that will come out in 2018.

 

It's good stuff.

 

Honestly I'd be surprised, I'm about halfway through but it's only kind of working for me, and I know for some people it doesn't work at all. It's got brutally hard boss fights and relatively easy traversal with sparse checkpoints, so you end up covering a lot of the same uninteresting ground. The level design is mostly pretty linear - it's got metroidvania trappings but I think the game would have been better without them. The writing's not... great; it's charming and they managed to sneak

 

Spoiler

the nanomachines and grey goo (ironic that the plot initially revolves around Robin fixing things without authorisation, except that all their technology is powered by something that would thoughtlessly destroy all life on earth if it leaked out)

 

by me without me twigging until it was time for me to work it out, but it needs a ruthless edit, and the dialogue's frequently leaden. The checkpointing is pretty shoddy, as well.

 

The thing it does well is the art and animation, which isn't surprising because Joakim Sandberg is one of the world's best sprite artists and this is his passion project.

 

If this came out a few years ago, absolutely this'd be a corker. But I can think of about three or four metroidvanias that came out in the last couple of years that are better, and the standard for game design has leapt up in the last few years.

 

 

[Kyir]

I firmly disagree (as it seems clear I would from my initial post.) The bosses aren't wildly out of line with the platforming in my experience, though they are a bit harder. The last few bosses are probably noticeably harder, but they're the last bosses so I approve. People are going to disagree as much on writing as they do on comparative difficulty too obviously, but I found the characters to be extremely charming, the dialogue to be amusing, and the overall plot twisty enough to keep my attention. It's definitely better writing than anything else I've played in a long time, especially when Agent Black is concerned (who I would probably put as one of my top few favorite game characters of all time?)

 

With how stale the characterization in most games I've played in the last few years has been, I would be shocked if anything that does it better comes out any time soon. 

[Laco]

Celeste! I reached the summit with 2077 deaths in just under 10 hours, glued to my Switch for most of release day.

 

I've been looking forward to this game for a long time, but I'm actually blown away by how well it turned out. Every piece - the music (especially), sound, pixel art, characters, writing, level design, and game feel - is individually brilliant, but the game is far more than the sum of those pieces. Comparing this with the original PICO-8 jam version feels like the perfect execution on Chris Hecker's exhortation to fully explore a game's mechanic. The story also tackles some fairly serious themes, and while I could see this not working for everyone it felt meaningful for me. It's a very human game.

 

I was worried the challenge would become overwhelming or too much of a focus, but ultimately I think it's quite well balanced. I did make 100+ attempts on some screens, but those were all chasing optional objectives and always my decision. If it gets too much there's an assist system that can be turned on or off at any time.

 

As with TowerFall, reaching the end of the game is just the start. There are much harder B-sides of each level to find and complete, fastest time and fewest death leaderboards, hundreds of challenge strawberries, and at least two layers of mystery to solve. I'm looking forward to making my way through these at a more relaxed pace.

 

We're only a month in but this will easily make my GOTYs of 2018. Highly recommended.

[Merus]

So I'm basically at the last boss of Iconoclasts; I'm doing end-game cleanup and struggling with some chests that look impossible, and my impression from part-way through hasn't changed much. It's messy, and a bit frustrating, because it got 90% of the way to being a great game and just missed the landing.

 

Take those last few bosses you mention, because I think it's emblematic of my frustrations with the game:

Spoiler

We have:

• a puzzle boss, Black trying to stop you from activating the rocket, which requires a bit of work to learn her attacks and to work out attacking her doesn't end the fight any quicker
• a save point, but no chance to refill ivory
• the last checkpoint
• then a very long cutscene where Black babbles about not letting you have the rocket, which should work except that Black's arc has basically been from wanting everyone to stop what they're doing to... wanting everyone to stop what they're doing. There's no sense that she's gone through any kind of journey like Chrome or Royal have; we don't really get an idea of why, when action is desperately needed, she needs everyone to not do anything.
• a boss fight which, thank god, shares the same telegraphs as Black has had in the last two fights except for the electric attack which is inexplicably about two seconds before the actual attack, so if you jump when you see the telegraph, you get hit by it
• straight into another cutscene
• the third boss fight, including several screen-filling attacks telegraphed only by a bit of animation in one part of the boss which, of course fills half the screen and is moving around a lot
• a fourth boss fight, which thankfully is fairly easy but if you died at this point you would go back to the previous checkpoint

 

And after all that, after all that's happened, I still don't understand

Spoiler

what causes Penance to turn up. So clearly the One Concern are sending death machines that bury under the nanomachine soil, but isn't that a little elaborate? Where are they getting these machines from? It doesn't seem like the One Concern run the planet spines and the other devices under the soil, but that's where the Penance device comes from. So, ?

 

[Kyir]

Your last spoiler will be answered for you in the near future (or at least my questions were all wrapped up nicely for me at the end.) Again, I can't disagree more about Black's storyline, but character preference is just one of those things. 

 

I spent another 7 hours today finding chests / doing extra bosses / challenge mode, and I stand by my 2018 GOTY statement. 

[Tanukitsune]

I beat Deponia Doomsday, which starts by making the previous trilogy... a dream sequence... a prophetic dream sequence, but that's not a good start.

 

I'll just say it has a puzzle where you have to figure out that you can pick a star from the sky... just like that.

 

And the final insult, which is a spoiler:

Spoiler

The game is a whole mess with time travelling and the story ended up kinda not happening and it's very awkward since for some reason a Goal that never met Rufus somehow falls in love with him.

 

 

I also finally beat Spyro, which is still good? I couldn't be bothered to 100% it though.

[SuperBiasedMan]

On 1/28/2018 at 4:56 AM, Laco said:

 There are much harder B-sides of each level to find and complete

I'm about halfway through Celeste and I made the mistake of trying the B-Side of level 1. SO hard. I managed to do it in the end, with almost 400 deaths. But it definitely taught me that these are post game things.

[Laco]

1 hour ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

I'm about halfway through Celeste and I made the mistake of trying the B-Side of level 1. SO hard. I managed to do it in the end, with almost 400 deaths. But it definitely taught me that these are post game things.

 

Heh. I just finished the B-side of level 3 in a little over 700 deaths. They're definitely far harder than the main game, but I haven't yet found anything that felt outright unfair. Gradually learning the rhythm of a screen, and knowing on a physical level exactly what you did wrong on each death, is so satisfying.

 

I'm still afraid to imagine the level 6 B-side, though.

[atte]

Celeste is great! I played quite a lot of the single player content in Towerfall, so I was excited to get a whole new game with the same feel.

The difficulty and level progression was actually kind of surprising and interesting towards the end:

 

Spoiler

After a series of intense, moody, final bossish feeling chase sections you get to the final part where you revisit past level mechanics, have a double air dash and the atmosphere is more uplifting and hopeful.

I like demanding platformers,  but even in the main path there was rooms where I was at first like "You want me to do what!?" - but almost everything ended up being just pleasingly challenging (...I'm sure there is some true platforming horrors waiting in the secret/optional areas!). Though there was one room in the main path where I totally lost my cool:

 

Spoiler

There was that strong wind pushing you back and you had to bounce high and quick from a cursed trampoline cloud - Great, suddenly the game turned into Japanese Super Mario 2...

 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Beat Celeste as well last night and loved it.

 

At the very start, the moveset seemed to be designed to help you mitigate mistakes. You can grab walls and climb them. Plus the dash can course correct. But in reality by the end of the game I had to use them in such a precise way that they were just a perfectly natural part of the toolset. And that's without even diving into more of the b-sides and getting more Strawberries. Such a wonderful game, I expect I'll dig more into this for more strawberries rather than continue my Super Meat Boy revisit.

[Merus]

So I think part of my problem with Iconoclasts was that I played it on Harder Mode, where you can only take a few hits before you die, which was recommended to me and it took me too long to realise that wasn't what I wanted. I wouldn't recommend it.

 

I've finished it - some of those later fights were rough - and I think my opinions above basically stand. (Notably, I still don't think I have any more handle over the plot than what I did before.)

[ephemeracollector]

I finished Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. I don't often actually *finish* video games, so this is an achievement.

 

I hadn't played it in many years but had fond memories. And when it came down to it, the final levels in Wario's castle felt very familiar, so I'm fairly sure I got most of the way to the end in the past but failed to actually beat Wario. Good thing I had the use of save states this time round.

 

Next on the list is Super Mario Bros. 3 which I never played, but already feels very familiar possibly because early Mario or possibly because elements were re-used in later editions or remasters. Then it's on to Super Mario Land 3 and the rest of the Wario games.

[Laco]

12 hours ago, ephemeracollector said:

I finished Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.

 

I too played this a lot as a kid but never beat Wario. I went back a few years ago and finally did, and in retrospect it feels so small and simple. I'm not saying I could finish it in under 30 minutes, but I would guess no more than two or three hours.

 

I've just been playing the DX colour hack on my GBA, which is an odd experience for a game I have such old memories of. The lag removal has a huge effect on the way it feels.

 

The later Wario Land games are my current project. II is amazingly inventive and exists in this weird space between what feels like old and modern design, but the missing nostalgia factor makes it harder for me to stick with it.

[Henke]

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a very pretty game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And also I just finished it. Both the stealth-action and the actual tomb raiding are an improvement on the 2013 game. The story is... so-so. Overall it's a good time!

[Kyir]

I beat Celeste (late to the game, apparently) and all but one of the B-Side levels. It seems like kind of a shame that a lot of the best platforming is hidden behind some secrets that can be a bit obtuse to find. Good music throughout, though a few of the remixes have been a bit iffy for me comparatively. The story's another one of those things about emotions I have to deal with in life, and it's really never been interesting for me to see fiction about it. 2018 has been a pretty good game year so far.

[dartmonkey]

I finally got Super Sonic in Somic Mania after getting the 5th, 6th and 7th emeralds in quick succession and beating the final boss 👍

 

Man, feeling like I'm on the cusp of missing the Celestegeist. Might go for it tomorrow morning.

[Patrick R]

Sinkr is a perfectly fine puzzle game about operating various contraptions to put round pegs in round holes and square ones in square holes. It introduces a few of it's mechanics in slightly obtuse ways, and I found the difficulty ramp pretty steep towards the end. 60 levels in total, worth the 99 cents I paid for it though the "responsive ambient music" mostly consisted of the four same piano notes playing whenever you did anything and that got annoying fast. It's on Kongregate so you don't have to buy it to play it.