Games You've Beat in 2016

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Why'd you need them to price the Switch before you sell the Wii U? Surely the price you can get for the Wii U will only go down from this point so the sooner you sell the better

[TheMightyEthan]

Because if the Switch is $500 then I'm not getting it and I'm keeping the Wii U, cause I need something to play Zelda on.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Ah, that makes sense. But it better hadn't be that dear. I'm hoping £300 for the bundle version.

Edited October 24, 2016 by TheDyingGerbil

[toxicitizen]

Shadow Warrior.

 

Beat it a few days ago. It's pretty good. I'd put it up there with Wolfenstein: TNO as far as succesfully modernizing a classic while staying true to its roots. It's kinda repetitive combat-wise but the writing and humor make up for it. Gonna have to play the sequel eventually, even though I hear it's sadly become a multiplayer open-world, Borderlands-esque loot drop kinda deal. Also really want to play the new DOOM now. I'd definitely grab it while it's on sale if money wasn't so tight right now.

 

But anyway, who cares about that shit, I FINALLY FUCKING BEAT SPELUNKY!!

 

Literally minutes ago. I still can't fully believe I finally did it. I played for about 25 hours around launch but stopped before I managed to successfully complete a run. Felt like picking it up again lately and after a little over 60 hours of total playtime spread over 3 fucking years, I finally managed to beat this fucking game! Holy shit, this has to be the best roguelike game I've ever played. I don't think any of them have managed to keep me playing for so long, at least. It's definitely one of the most satisfying games I've beaten to date. Only other thing that comes to mind as being comparable would be the first time I beat a Souls game. Holy shit!

 

Next goal: beat Spelunky by going to Hell and defeating the secret boss. I fully expect this to take me another 60+ hours.

Edited October 24, 2016 by FLDemon

[Thursday Next]

Completed Arkham VR. I'm pretty much the Bat-man now.  

[TheFlyingGerbil]

how was the VR for a whole game rather than just an "experience"?

[Thursday Next]

It really shone. Didn't over do the jump scares, the looking around and manipulating the world worked really well. Being able to pick up 3d puzzle pieces and turn them around in real time with two hands was so cool.

 

Think of all those annoying Resident Evil puzzles where you have to line shit up my moving one bit at a time, but now the manipulation is natural so the puzzle is much more rewarding.

[Eleven]

AC Syndicate.

 

 

Such a happy ending. Thanks Ubisoft!

I want another trilogy with these 2.

 

 

Also, have to remember to look up the whole modern storyline after Desmond. I really want them to continue it in a game properly.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Eleven

[danielpholt]

INSIDE.

 

Yeah. Lovely to look at, fun to play and all in all, very enjoyable. 

 

 

What the fuck happened at the end there?

 

[FMW]

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga part 1 is still a fantastic game.  Systems/gameplay focused JRPGs tend to age pretty well because a rewarding back and forth interplay between you and the computer in a turn based context is going to be equally rewarding regardless of when it's played.  The graphics are only representational and not actually indicative of hitboxes/player control/anything else.  Digital Devil Saga is fun to play and the story interferes only enough to provide context for each dungeon you need to conquer.  That's just how I like it.

 

Owlboy is a freaking disappointment.  Great music, great art, great sprites, and great pacing... but the actual substance of the game fell flat.  I don't like the story, it has too many words saying too little and even if it was eloquent it isn't even trying to say anything interesting.  The mechanics feel incomplete.  Like, I spent the entire game waiting for the second layer to kick in.  And it never came.  So it really just comes down to floating around a 2D plane.  It's a huge bummer that a game all about a boy learning to fly can't depict flight even as well as Mario.  "Swoop" is not a verb in this game and you can't accelerate/decelerate either.  And it's short!  The decade development cycle made me think there would be a lot of random stuff crammed in here, but there wasn't really.  It's a very linear experience that doesn't take too long.

 

It's like... what if you made a Kirby game but instead of putting Kirby in dozens of levels built out of 4-5 bite sized ideas each, you make 5 really big levels that explore like 2/3 each.

 

I think there's an inverse relationship between how tight your mechanics are and how inventive your level design has to be.  On one end of the spectrum, Devil May Cry has almost zero level design because the entire point of the level is just to chain together perfectly flat arena fights against waves of enemies teleporting in out of nowhere.  That combat is the reason to play the game, so it's fine that the levels don't change things up appreciably.  On the opposite end of the spectrum there's Kirby where you can basically float and get hit a ton and the game won't ever punish you for it, and to keep you interested the levels are really dense and provide most of the fun.  Owlboy is Kirby mechanics in levels better suited for Cave Story.

[toxicitizen]

Really need to play the DDS games as well. IIRC, I own them both digitally on PS3 but my plate is kinda full of JRPGs already at the moment. Really tempted to grab physical copies just for the hell of it, though. Those two and Nocturne would go nicely on the shelf with my copies of P3 and P4.

 

------------------------------

 

Anyway, now that I finally watched the Battle of Gods arc of Dragon Ball Super, I finally went back and finished the story mode of Dragon Ball Xenoverse. I've already talked about the game at length when I started playing it in the summer, so I'll just say that the best DBZ game ever is in there somewhere. The problem is, for some fucking reason, they decided to bury it under random loot drops, unnecessary RPG mechanics and tons of pretty much mandatory grinding.

 

It's a shame because the core mechanics are pretty damn fun despite their simplicity. I definitely enjoyed my time with it and I'll probably keep playing it on and off and go for 100% achievements completion eventually. The amount of mindless content you need to go through actually makes it a pretty good podcast game. I'm gonna wait for a price drop on the sequel, though. It sounds like it's basically the same game with only marginal improvements. I'll want more eventually but I've still got plenty left with this one for the time being.

[TheMightyEthan]

All the Dragon Age: Inquisition DLC.  It was decent for the most part, but Trespasser was really where it was at.  I liked that it expanded on the core story instead of just being a completely isolated thing.  It's basically the Dragon Age equivalent of Mass Effect's Arrival DLC.  Got me stoked for a sequel, actually.

[Baconrath]

I finished my 1st playthrough of Trails of Cold Steel. I really liked it. Can't imagine not using a guide for this, though. I might try Cold Steel II later.

 

Probably not going to get the platinum trophy cause to do that I'd have to get all the bonding trophies. And to get those I *think* I'd have to fight a level ~70 boss with 200,000 HP again and fuck that noise. I was a little underleveled and probably had a sub-optimal orbment setup (shouldve cheesed it with a dodge-tank) so I barely eked out a win by quaffing All the Items.

 

anime/10 is gud game

[toxicitizen]

I finished my 1st playthrough of Trails of Cold Steel. I really liked it. Can't imagine not using a guide for this, though. I might try Cold Steel II later.

 

Probably not going to get the platinum trophy cause to do that I'd have to get all the bonding trophies. And to get those I *think* I'd have to fight a level ~70 boss with 200,000 HP again and fuck that noise. I was a little underleveled and probably had a sub-optimal orbment setup (shouldve cheesed it with a dodge-tank) so I barely eked out a win by quaffing All the Items.

 

anime/10 is gud game

 

What did you think of the pacing? For the first 50 hours I was embracing how slow it was because I expected as much after FC, but then I was like "alright, cool, time to wrap this up" but the game insisted "nah, let's do this routine shit for another 20 hours, k?". Pretty much went from being my favorite Trails game yet to somewhere between FC and SC over the span of 10 hours.

 

The last couple hours were complete madness and made it all worth it, though. I really need to wrap up Xanadu Next and Gurumin and go back to Trails II...

[Thursday Next]

Titan Fall 2. Such a great campaign. The fun of switching from ultra agile Pilot, to walking battle-tank is brilliant!  

[Baconrath]

@FLD: I liked what my brother described as a 'slow burn.' It gave a little time for character development and such.

 

Also minor nitpicks/issues:

- if you equip an item you only have 1 of and then go to buy another one of it in a store, it says you own 0 of that item

- sometimes the game unexpectedly breaks my combat links by switching my party around etc.

[Mr. GOH!]

Tyranny. Very interesting concept, and I kinda dug the lore. The execution seemed a bit rushed, though. The area design was not that interesting and there just was not enough variety of enemies to fight. The game was also too short for its ideas and systems. As you progress, you unlock the ability to do all sorts of stuff outside of combat (like the stronghold stuff in games likes Dragon Age Inquisition), but that part only gets fleshed out immediately before the final sequence of short combat quests. 

 

I get a very strong sense that there is a lot of replayability for the story, but the combat was so same-y after a while that I don't think I'll be replaying any time soon.

 

The game is also short for a modern RPG, although not as short as some folks make it out to be. It also becomes more linear after the first Act, although your path is very much affected by what you did in character creation and the first Act, to the extent that entire large areas and quest lines will be very significantly altered or removed depending on how you approached the first hours of the game, which is quite interesting. That is, it depends both on what faction you choose to support (or none; there are three, but I think you can also be a free agent) and how you approach character creation, the rest of the game plays out differently. 

 

I mention character creation determining how the game progresses because, in addition to choosing your stats, looks, and background, character creation also involved you making a significant number of choices regarding about the game world. Specifically, you play a very powerful member of an evil overlord's army as it invades the last unconquered corner of the continent. How you choose to deal with infighting between the different parts of the army and the overlord's various lieutenants, as well as how you treat the conquered peoples, significantly impacts what happens in the game.

 

tl;dr - very itneresting game and lore, choice and consequences galore, but kinda drab combat and hurried overall design. 

[Mister Jack]

Beat the campaign for Titanfall 2.  It's pretty short but very well made, so I'm relatively satisfied.  Time to get my ass stomped in the multiplayer.

[MetalCaveman]

Nova Cover Ops mission pack 3.

 

Pretty enjoyable expansion, shame they've announced there will be no more of these (at least not during 2017). The ending was a bit disappointing, but I think that's more of an issue with how spaced the packs were, I imagine if you were to play them now that all three have been released it wouldn't be so bad.

 

Loved the weapons and unit upgrades they give you, specially the plasma rifle, that thing is awesome. \m/ \m/

[toxicitizen]

Hitman.

 

Just beat the final story mission. I still enjoyed Absolution despite it being an abysmal failure as a Hitman game but this, holy shit, this is the real deal. This is Hitman. I'll have to dig into it a bit more to be sure but I think it might actually have dethroned Blood Money as the best in the series. The one thing I found a little disappointing is that there's only six main levels total (seven if you count the tutorial) but they all provide so much replay value (and are so fucking massive) that it's kinda hard to complain. 

 

It's also a pretty good example of episodic gaming done right. I was initially turned off by the business model big time and only bought the intro pack to try the game out at launch, but now I almost regret not getting the full thing from the start. There isn't enough of a story for it to lose momentum between episodes and each level offers an absolute metric fuck ton of replayability. I would've probably sunk a lot of time into the game by now had I been playing it on and off over a period of multiple months. They've already confirmed that the game will be getting a second season and I'll definitely be getting that one on day one.

 

 

[Strangelove]

In the last month I've finished Until Dawn, Bloodborne(including the dlc) and Mad Max.

I loved all of them.

[TheMightyEthan]

Dishonored 2

 

I really liked it a lot, although the ending was kind of anticlimactic, even with the little epilogue narration by the Outsider.  I don't think it helped that during the final encounter it wasn't made very clear what you were supposed to actually do, so that was a little frustrating and probably detracted from the experience.  Overall though very good game.

 

The only thing they did that I didn't like was that two of the targets are set up almost like boss fights (granted ones you can stealth), which didn't feel very in keeping with style of the rest of the game.  They were well done for what they were, but it still clashed.

[TheMightyEthan]

Titanfall 2

 

Haven't tried multiplayer yet, but the campaign was excellent.  Despite it only being 6 hours I'd have been happy with paying $30 for it (which kind of I did but I don't count $20 of it because it was a gift card I would probably never have used otherwise).

[toxicitizen]

Doom.

 

Finished the campaign last night. I usually try to keep my expectations in check when the internet praises a game this much but holy shit, in this case I was not let down. This game is incredible! It even blows Wolfenstein TNO out of the water. It didn't click immediately, the first 2-3 hours were good but it wasn't blowing me away or anything. My shooter fatigue was still very much there. Then more enemy types started showing up and things got progressively more chaotic to the point where you pretty much have to be constantly moving and jumping all over the place to even stay alive, because running backwards and circle strafing just isn't going to cut it. And once that happens, the game becomes just pure goddamn fun. It blows my fucking mind that they somehow managed to make this game look dull and boring in pre-release footage because in reality it's basically the polar opposite of that. That's some seriously impressive marketing ineptitude right there.

 

Now I'm kinda curious to go back and finally play Doom 3 all the way through. This one doesn't repeat the mistake of trying to be an all serious horror game and instead rightfully focuses on being fun. Could be interesting to compare and contrast the two.

[Baconrath]

Finished the main story of Pokemon Moon. I think it was pretty good as far as Nintendo's Madden goes. Lots of good quality of life updates.

 

Few things:

1. Thank goodness for revives

2. Still not sure why ghosts(or my ghost sand castle for that matter) are weak to being bitten

3. If I had picked Litten I would have named it Rick Flare

 

 

Rick Flair WHOOOO