Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Ralizah I felt much the same way as you about Wonder Boy, although I found the movement to be oddly slippery, which led to some annoying stuff like falling into enemies or off of high platforms. I really loved the presentation - the hand-drawn art and the revamped soundtrack were really lovely.

Anyways, I finished Wolfenstein: The New Order last night. I had a real blast with it. There were some frustrating difficulty spikes dotted throughout but I liked the world and the characters enough to power through. Really looking forward to getting around to The New Colossus

Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero (Nintendo Switch)

It was really fun, but I don't think I feel as strongly for it as I do Pirate's Curse.

Pros:

• It looked like a cartoon in motion, and I loved how it's colors popped on the Switch's screen.
• I enjoyed the humor (though I think they dropped the game's best line during the first boss).
• The platforming was solid, and I enjoyed that, if you upgraded all your magic & took all your time to collect everything, you were literally invincible by endgame (though you can turn upgrades off if you want to make things harder). I liked the power trip though, lol.

Cons:

• The bosses weren't really challenging (I don't think they'd have been hard even if I turned off upgrades), and the final boss in particular wasn't intimidating at all & had like maybe only two(?) different moves it would use in it's later phases (the first phase was far and away the best).
• For some reason I only have 99% completion, yet I can't think of what I'm missing. I've gotten all heart holders, gallery keys, transformations (with accompanying abilities), & magic/attack/defence upgrades, and anything else was required to complete the game (such as blobfish kids or sunken souls), so I'm not sure what it is.

Over the last 2 weeks I beat:

-Horizon: Zero Dawn The Frozen Wilds
Really great expansion. It's more Horizon, which I love. I hope they don't play it too safe with the eventual sequel. There's always room for improvement.

-Bioshock: The Collection
Bioshock 10/10
Bioshock 2 8/10
Bioshock Infinite 10/10 (Burial at sea 10/10)
Greatest trilogy in gaming history?

-Ys: Memories of Celcetta (PSVita)
Beat this last night & really enjoyed it. Liked it so much that I bought Ys VIII for PS4 at full price, which I still can't play due to the localization issues (supposedly it'll be done mid-December).
I can't think of a game that rewards exploration as much. Not only does it fit within the context of the game and character, but it enhances character development via the memory fragments split across the world.

SOMA

Liked

• Dark, complex, and mostly well written science-fiction/horror narrative.
• Great character writing. You really get a sense of these people: their hopes, their fears, and the way they fall apart under inhuman levels of stress.
• Supremely atmospheric setting that channels the original Bioshock at its absolute best.
• Game is the perfect length and doesn't overstay its welcome.
• I take back my previous criticism about the "audio logs" in this game. The game explains what is happening perfectly, and this is one of the few games where it makes sense to hear logs of peoples' thoughts in their final moment everywhere.
• The game is a fascinating meditation on the nature of consciousness and identity. What is to be a person? Would an intelligent machine think and value in the same way humans would? If human consciousness can be represented as code and manipulated like a computer program, then to what extent can this representation be said to be any more real or significant than any other piece of software that replicates intelligent thought? Would deleting the coded representation of a human intelligence be the equivalent of murder, and, if not, what is the crucial difference between the two acts? If there are multiple copies of my consciousness out there, which one is "me?" Does the term "me" even have meaning in such a situation? The game implicitly raises all of these questions, and many of them are... difficult to grapple with in a candid manner.

Mixed

• The ocean exploration bits. Most of them are slow and boring wastes of time, in my opinion, but there is one terrifying sequence near the end that evokes emotions of terror and helplessness in the player that also takes place in the ocean.

Didn't like

• This is probably exclusively a PC problem, but the game has major performance and screen-tearing issues at times (I know it's not just me, because other people were reporting similar problems).
• Some of the writing is a bit lacking in subtlety. When you have characters explicitly discussing the game's themes with somewhat obvious dialogue, it's time to take another pass at the script.
• The level design is a bit unsuited to the "hide and seek" gameplay in many cases, and it can be pretty difficult to avoid certain monsters.
• The game has monsters that navigate entirely by sound, and it also allows you to pick up and toss items, but, for some reason, you can't throw items to trick these monsters. Weird oversight.
• The game doesn't seem to have any kind of feedback about whether you're well-hidden enough from enemies, which can be frustrating.
• The screen flickers whenever an enemy is approaching. I get that this is to warn about the presence of a monster nearby, like the radio static in Silent Hill, but where as that was unnerving, this effect is just annoying.
• Not really a fan of games where you have to run and hide from all of the monsters.
• There are some annoying bugs near the end. In particular, one death sequence near the end can glitch and loop endlessly. I had to exit out of the game and go back in after five minutes of listening to my character scream in pain.

Overall, a solid 9/10, I think. This is a game that every adult sci-fi fan should eventually play.

Just finished up Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier. I enjoyed it overall. The plot is interesting enough, the characters are well written and the voice acting is strong. The game throws decisions your way at a pretty steady pace and some truly felt consequential but I'm not sure it offers quite enough to truly stand out as a must-play experience. I give it a solid 3/5.

@KratosMD Was that bit scripted? One thing I really liked about this game is how hard it was for me to tell what was scripted and what was me just screwing up (obviously, when I don't die, that'll clue me in afterwards: I mean as it's happening) The worst part for me was near the end at Site Tau where you have to open these slowly unlocking doors while proxies prowl around and hunt you down. They were hard to evade, and that bit was genuinely scary. I also really love the part where, after following lights to get to Site Phi, you exit a tunnel and swim toward the next light... only to find that it's actually a light that belongs to an enormous and very bloodthirsty Anglerfish. BRILLIANT moment. Especially as you're swimming through the labyrinthine tunnels to avoid it. I really felt like prey.

I'm a bit of a horror freak, but I also struggle with these games where you have to run and hide from the monsters. It's incredibly unnerving. I'm still a bit nervous to play Outlast, to be honest.

So I finished Shadow of Mordor. I played it rather quickly (for me), finishing the story and about 1/4 of the side objectives in about 28 hours of game time over about 2 weeks. I liked the game. Maybe even a little more than I thought I would. However, it definitely has its flaws.

The main thing that jumped out to me was how a lot of the gameplay mechanics seemed derived straight from other games. It is like a greatest hits conglomeration of multiple other games (Assassin’s Creed’s climbing and stealth, Batman Arkham City’s combat/counter system, even a little Tomb Raider in how the maps are set up, etc.) Then they put their own spin on things with the branding system (slightly reminiscent of MGSV where you fulton enemy soldiers to join your cause). Of course what game nowadays doesn’t borrow from others, especially 3rd person open world action games. The same could be said of Horizon Zero Dawn. But I love the LotR Universe so the story kept me engaged.
My main complaint would be that I did have an issue with the movement, climbing, and traversal being a bit wonky, inaccurate and difficult at times — getting stuck in corners, trying to jump and climb and Talion just stands there, trying to shimmy laterally while hanging and it doesn’t respond, etc. And Talion moves pretty slowly. Since HZD is a similar game, it’s hard not to compare the smoothness and ease with which Aloy runs, rolls, and jumps and Talion with his awkwardness and tank-like unresponsiveness. Also, immediately after finishing SoM I started NieR Automata and OMG! 2B moves around like a dream! She feels light as a feather and nimble as a cat in comparison. It so much funner when the character responds and moves where you want it to.

Another example in SoM, many times I’d be hanging from a ledge in stealth and push the circle ⭕️ button to do a stealth brand on an Orc and the game would just make Talion let go of the ledge since the same button is mapped to that too, so I’d fall and immediately be detected and have 20 Orcs swarm me. Which that’s another thing — I would have liked some better crowd control options. It’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed, so the game is better played in stealth.

As far as positives, the branding and turning orcs against one another is pretty great, but it took too long to get to that point in the game and it was already half over. Also it was kind of hard trying to keep from killing your own orcs in a big skirmish when allies and foes are all crunched in during a skirmish. Again, with Talion’s inaccuracy of movement and targeting, you end up slaying your own warchief sometimes instead of the one you’re fighting against.
Oh yeah ... the positives — I did enjoy the story and characters. I was amazed at the huge variety of NPC orc character renditions. There was an enormous variety of orc character models and voices. In fact, I don’t think I saw the same orc twice. That was truly amazing, considering the huge number there are in the game.

And decapitating an orc was satisfying.

Okay, that’s enough. I say it’s a good, not great game. I’ll probably play Shadow of War when it’s $10 in a year or so.

Finished up Super Mario World on the SNES Classic tonight. Got all 96 exits. Still one of my favorite Mario games of all time.

Better late than never, but I finally beat GTA V! What a great cast. Did not expect to like the campaign as much as I did, but it was awesome(30+ hour story).
Deserves all the success it has gotten.

Just beat The Last of Us on Grounded for the 7th time. Still my favourite game, though I left myself with too little ammo to do some of the fights properly. That said, I think Grounded is the game's best difficulty because it feels jarring on the lower difficulties when you're supposedly in this post-apocalyptic world and there's ample ammo and supplies all over the place.

Finally finished Cuphead. Absolutely brilliant game and although it took me way too long to beat (I've heard a lot of people saying they'd done it in 7 or 8 hours.. took me nearly 19), I'm already eager to jump back in and try to do it all on expert difficulty.

@BlindMan94 I've yet to finish TLOU on Grounded but agree that it is definitely the best way to play the game. It makes it rock hard but it makes the difficulty of the game match the atmosphere it's trying to portray so well.

@roe Man, you must have some serious gaming chops! I've beaten 2 levels on the first part and that took me and a pal about 3 hours of trying. That game is seriously difficult.

The Mummy Demastered: Picked this up in a sale recently, but there's not much to say here. It's a perfectly competent and utterly cookie-cutter Metroid clone. Bosses, environmental design, gameplay, etc. are all unremarkable. The music is suitably moody and there's a semi-interesting ZombiU-esque mechanic where, after you die, you have to kill the resurrected corpse of your previous character to get your stuff back, but otherwise this game is pretty forgettable.

Oh, and it only took me 5 hours to get 90-ish percent map completion. It's REALLY short. And the collectibles (aside from health and ammo packs, because this doesn't even pretend not to be Metroid) don't seem to do anything.

After some more backlog cleaning, I got Bastion, Yakuza Kiwami, and Heavenly Sword done within the last month. The latter I'm happy to have finally beaten after leaving it hanging for 10 years.

Assassin's Creed: Origins

A really good game. It's probably my #2 GOTY after Horizon and without a doubt my biggest surprise of the year.

I just beat everything on South Park Fractured but Whole but the Token trophy did not pop so I had to turn around and start a second play though. Just finished night one so I'll be playing that again for the next week in hopes of getting the platinum this time. Also yesterday finished Guardians of the Galaxy Telltale really enjoyed this one and hope for a second season, especially with the after credits season setting one up.

Finally finished Wolfenstein 2 after putting it down for Frozen Wildlands and Mario. I have mixed feelings about this game - I thought they made a great over the top story but it was fun and exciting and also surprisingly emotional. Step up from the first.

However, the gameplay was just frustrating in places. I platinumed the first game and DLC which was tough but there was lots of angles to employ. I found stealth largely meaningless in this game - I just kept getting spotted and then jetted around guns blazing. The levels were very generic and no real bosses. I will still play a third for the story but didn't enjoy the game as much as I was hoping.

I finished Dishonored's Death Of The Outsider recently and thought it was once more some fine work from Arkane Studios. I really love how they keep coming up with unique powers for different characters. Hopefully there's still a lot more to come.

@KratosMD Glad you enjoyed it mate! Did you take on the rare Nevi in the rift planes? I highly suggest checking out The Mirage Rare Nevi. It's my favourite boss battle on Vita. http://gravityrush.wikia.com/wiki/The_Mirage:_Rare_Nevi
Enjoy GR2- the most overlooked game of the generation.