Games You've Beat in 2016

[deanb]

I've beaten the main campaign of Borderlands. Everything exploding into a hundred guns and armour at the end was too cruel. The actual final fight was quite easy, but I've ended up with quite an OP pistol and my only issue with it is I didn't spend much time on upgrading my pistol ammo (thankfully the bosses exploded into a a chunk of eridium too so I can rectify that). Onwards to the rest of Dragon Keep then onwards to Witcher 3 DLC.

[Strangelove]

Saints Row: Gat Outta Hell. It's just more SR4, which is what I wanted. Flying is fun in that game.

 

Parappa The Rapper 2. It's so good and looks great on PS4.

[Mr. GOH!]

Far Harbor.

 

It was nice, but not as good as it could have been. 

[Mr. GOH!]

Witcher 3. Fantastic game all around.

 

Got to the final sequence of battles last August but put the game down to play other games and just picked it back up tonight to finish the main quest since I want to try the DLC expansions.

[Thursday Next]

Beated UC4. Hurrah!

[TheMightyEthan]

I beat Mirror's Edge Catalyst yesterday.

 

Overall I am extremely happy with it.  It's not perfect but all my complaints really amount to mere annoyances that don't detract from the game as a whole.  If you liked the first one you'll almost certainly like this one.

[TCP]

Beated UC4. Hurrah!

Did you kind of, almost, sort of... cry??

[toxicitizen]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel.
 
Finished it a couple days ago. Man, and I thought Trails in the Sky SC was long. This one took me a little over 82 hours, and that was without going out of my way to look for hidden side-quests and stuff. Overall, it's about a 50/50 mix of being exactly like the Trails in the Sky games while also taking a completely different overall structure. It even takes some pretty obvious inspiration from Persona, of all things. Unfortunately, it's not without issues.
 
I went in expecting something similar to TitS FC, where the pacing is very slow and very little happens for the first half of the game. And that's pretty much exactly how the game is. Halfway though and you're still finding out about main characters' backstories and it's great! Almost everyone gets their time to shine and ends up being much deeper than the archetype they're initially introduced as. That's probably the game's greatest strength. The problem is that while FC is a slow and laid back experience, I really wouldn't say that it had pacing issues. The same cannot be said for Trails of Cold Steel. 

 

So here's the deal. The game takes place at Thors Military Academy (just a fancy way of saying high school), and every chapter is structured the same way. First you get a free day, during which you have a few (generally) non-combat side-quests to complete as well as "bonding points" to spend. There's where the Persona inspiration comes in. You spend a bonding point by hanging out with a party member, which strengthens your "bond" and makes it more effective when you link up with them during combat. It's not the most original or exciting thing ever but it works and serves as a good way to provide character development that you can ignore or dig into as much as you like. Or, if you're like me, allows you to focus on the characters you like and ignore those you don't. Then you head to the old schoolhouse for a little bit of dungeon crawling and that ends your free day. After that, the story moves forward a bit and you go on a field study. Basically, you travel to a different town for a few days where you'll need to accomplish a set of tasks and then a bunch of exciting plot happens there.

 

Here's the problem: the further you get into the game, the more interesting and exciting the plot events get. But then when it's over you go back to school and have to complete these menial tasks again for an hour or two before you can go on the next field study. Around the 50 hours mark, that shit got real old. When FC really got going, it kept at it until the end of the game. Here, you've got this stop and start pacing that really starts to hurt the game and kills all the momentum of the story. It got to a point where I just wanted to rush through the beginning of each chapter because the idea of running around for an hour doing errands for the student council followed by another hour of exploring the old schoolhouse started feeling like a waste of time when all I really wanted was to continue the damn story. 

 

It's a shame, really, because for the first 50 hours I was enjoying the game a lot more than I did FC on my first run. Even when little of consequence was happening, I was having a blast getting to know the characters (and running into characters from the Sky games, too), taking in all the world building and lore and hearing all these references to events from the past games and what impact they had on the overall world. It sucks but the game is simply way too long for its own good and structured in a way that harms the narrative.

 

Luckily, I'm hearing that Cold Steel II changes the game structure quite a bit (and after that ending, how could it not??), so I'm really looking forward to the sequel regardless. And oh man, that ending! I got a pretty major reveal sort of retroactively spoiled when I thought "Wait, what if..." and then instantly remembered seeing artwork on youtube a while back when I was listening to the sequel's soundtrack that pretty much confirmed I was spot on. So that was a bummer but whatever, so I kept playing, waiting for the reveal and expecting the game to end on it. Then it happened and... all kinds of crazy shit started happening! The last couple hours of the game alone made it worth enduring the boring parts just to get to it. It's not a cliffhanger quite as painful as the one from FC but it's a cliffhanger alright.

 

So, yeah. Really looking forward to continuing the story this fall. If the jump in quality is similar to the FC->SC one (and I've seen people calling CSI their least favorite of the entire series while also calling CSII one of the better ones), then holy shit Cold Steel II is going to be something else! And then there's also Trails in the Sky the 3rd coming in 2017! It's kinda crazy to think that about a year ago we were still waiting for TitS SC and it was looking very likely that it would be the second and last Kiseki game released in english. Whereas a year from now, we're only going to be missing two games out of seven. It looked pretty hopeless for a few years there but now is a really good time to be a Trails fan!

[Mister Jack]

Finally beat Odin Sphere.  Feels good to finally finish it.  I'm going to try to get the platinum on this one since I already have the majority of the trophies.

[Strangelove]

DmC Definitive Edition.

It was fine, but the whole time I wished I was playing DMC3 or DMC4.

I didnt even finish the Vergil dlc. Im just going to replay 4 instead.

[Hot Heart]

TMNT: Mutants in Manhattahn.

 

It took a while to beat, simply because I was playing exclusively online and that was somewhat at the whims of the room owner when it wasn't me and goddamn connection problems other times (it would lock up right at the end of the boss rush level...). The online is actually very stable in general, however.

 

There have been a lot of bad reviews and I understand why. Playing this single-player (especially just to crank out a review) is goddamn awful. You have to manage all the turtles' equipment and powers and constantly switch between them to overcome the harder challenges, and the objectives you have to complete during a level fall flat when you're just with the AI. Although, to their benefit, they work rather well and you can issue commands in order to accomplish certain things.

 

Honestly, I'm somewhat addicted to the game. Now, don't get me wrong, I think it'd probably be a hard sell to anyone who doesn't love TMNT, but taking it online and cranking up the difficulty is super-fun. Once you've played a bit and got a grasp of how to counter or dodge attacks along with upgrading your ninjutsu and equipping some powerful charms, it all comes together rather well. I mentioned before that it reminds me of a sort of beat-em-up version of an EDF game and that's because it's a somewhat low-budget, grindy game where it's all about replaying levels over and over to get better stuff then attempt a higher difficulty to get more stuff, etc. I really need to experiment with the ninjutsu powers for different levels/bosses and upgrade my charms to give me sweet perks.

 

So, right now, I've cleared the game on hard and once I either find a regular group or some close friends grab copies after the price drops, I'll be attempting very hard. In the meantime, it's fun to just jump on, find a group and work your way through whichever level someone fancies. This encounter with Karai, complete with secret boss Shredder, was a really tense, fun fight where I kind of kept him busy while the others focused on Karai. I thought we were screwed when we nearly wiped before Shredder showed up.

[Mister Jack]

And got the platinum.  Time to go back to finishing Witcher 3!

[TCP]

The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone

-It was cool, I guess. I don't know, I just didn't give a fuck about some of the new characters. Shani though, she was cool.

[TheMightyEthan]

Just finished Divinity: Dragon Commander.  It was neat, got me interested in the world.  Maybe I'll have to try out Original Sin at some point...

[deanb]

I need to get back into that, had some area with a comb of puzzle+toxic gas clouds that I carried on getting pissed at, but now I've a free upgrade to the enhanced edition it might fare better especially now I've got more a hang of it.

[TheMightyEthan]

Scratch Shadowrun Returns off my list.

 

I liked it quite a bit.  I had been planning to tackle Mad Max next, but now I'm considering jumping right in to Dragonfall, especially since I've heard that's even better.  My main hesitation is that I have also been planning to replay DXHR before MD comes out and I don't want to burn myself out on cyberpunk RPGs.

[Mr. GOH!]

Dragonfall is significantly better, especially the companions (very mass effect-y how they work). I'd play that next. Make your main a different class, too, since the character system is so robust.

[Mal]

Captain Forever Remix

 

It's not an easy game but part of it is due to slightly janky controls. Your base ship (block with the CF star) is your last ditch ship that can take down some much larger ships. It just lacks maneuverability. Larger ships lack of maneuverability is due to uneven load or uneven thrust. One small mistake can take out you ship. For my winning run, my original ship was taken out that way. The ship you see now was built from the ship that killed me that I manage to take down with my base ship. It gave me some long range blasters which I then used to cheese a ship that had all these shields and upgraded blasters. It allowed me to make the ultimate cheese ship with tons of long ranged blasters, forward and backward thrusters and a fuck-ton of shields that won me this run since I usually out-range most enemies and I have these shields to protect me if I need buzz (I'm surprisingly nimble) by some fire.

 

With that all said, it's a fun game that I suggest if you want something different for about 10 hours. I can see myself coming back though.

Now back to Overwatch...

Edited June 26, 2016 by MaliciousH

[Mister Jack]

Finally beat Witcher 3 after 74 hours.  Man, this is one of, if not THE best open world game I've ever played.  I went through the whole trilogy over the course of a few months since, as some of you my recall, my last PC couldn't play the first game for some stupid reason.  Having the events of previous games fresh in my mind got me really invested in Geralt's story, and in the end I was relatively satisfied with how it all came to a close.  It feels good to finally finish an epic trilogy like this, though I definitely plan on getting the expansion pass for the third game.  Excluding Fallout 4, I haven't bought a season pass in YEARS, so that's saying something.

[Thursday Next]

Kinda sorta beat Zero Time Dilemma (got one ending) but it totes doesn't count.

[deanb]

I need to get in on that sweet Expansion action given I paid for it like...a year ago

[danielpholt]

I played and finished Refunct today. It's a short little puzzle game in which you jump on a serious of platforms in order to turn them green, collect the glowing thing and ultimately press the big red button. 

 

I loved it. I don't believe I've ever played a more satisfying game and more people should play it. 

[MetalCaveman]

Mirror's Edge Catalyst, it was fun, didn't bother with most of the delivery stuff sincethe time limit is kind of annoying:

 

Person A: Did you receive the sample/package/thing?

Person B: No, the runner was 1m away but they just suddenly stopped and smashed the thing to pieces.

Person A: Again!? It's the 3rd time this week!

 

 

Everything else was cool, though, loved the movement system.

 

 

The best parts were during missions, like the last one, using the magrope/grappling hook on the giant fans of DOOM was cool. \m/ \m/

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I think those delivery missions should have been presented more as time trials than actual time limits. At the very least they should have had a longer time limit and then also had leader boards.

 

Honestly, my biggest complaint with the game is that there's no way to go back and replay missions to compete for times.

[toxicitizen]

Zero Escape Vol. 3: Zero Time Dilemma.

 

I still can't get over the fact that this game almost didn't happen. That just might've been the worst unresolved cliffhanger I would've ever experienced. Thankfully, we avoided that darkest of timelines and the game did get made. All things considered, it was a pretty satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.

 

There were a few things we'd heard while the game was in development that I wasn't exactly stoked about. For one, the inclusion of an RNG element to the game, which seemed like a very weird decision. There was also a small worry based on what they showed early on that the setting wouldn't live up to what the ending of Virtue's Last Reward had built up. Finally, I wasn't quite sure what to make of the switch to full cutscenes rather than the usual VN presentation. Really glad to say I was wrong on all counts. Well, mostly.

 

The game is much shorter than VLR and most of the scenes (even the ending) feel a lot briefer than they were in previous games. That had to have been a result of using full cutscenes (possibly also budget related). It also doesn't introduce many new concepts and instead mostly focuses on wrapping up loose ends from the first two games. But honestly, I didn't feel like the game suffered from any of that. At least, I didn't personally had any issues with the final result. Game was definitely worth the 3 years wait.

 

It's good to finally have closure on this series but at the same time I'm a little sad to see it end. Hopefully whatever Uchikoshi makes next will be just as good. In the meantime, I'll be eagerly anticipating Danganronpa V3. Oh and the Steam releases of 999 and VLR, too. It's gonna be good to finally have the entire series on a single platform.