Games You've Beat in 2016

[TheMightyEthan]

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

Bite is a dark-type move, and ghost-type Pokemon are weak to dark-type moves.

[Baconrath]

I know that I just thought in regards specifically to biting that a ghost made out of sand it would be killed in one or two hits was kinda weird.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Baconrath

[TCP]

Pokemon Sun

Man, way too much story. Get real, Nintendo. Also, the waypoint kind of ruins the game. I did like the world, the characters were fine, the new Poke designs were really good.... kind of spoilerish:

 

For a second there I really thought I was going to Kanto. DLC maybe?

 

[Mister Jack]

Final Fantasy XV

Took me about 40 hours.  I enjoyed the hell out of this game, though at the same time I can understand why others might be frustrated with it.  Why is there so much driving?  Why is fast travel only sometimes available?  Why can you only take one hunt at a time?  Why do you have to turn on wait mode to use libra?  Why does chapter 13 suck so hard?  These are all legitimate complaints, but they didn't detract from the fun enough to ruin the experience for me.  The combat was pretty damn fun, too.  I feel like it was worth the wait, and the game's director has already said that they plan on adding new and extra free content down the road outside of the season pass.  I'm probably going to try to platinum this one.  It seems fairly doable compared to some RPGs, and I already have around 70% of the trophies just from my normal playthrough.

[CorgiShinobi]

Pokemon Sun

Man, way too much story. Get real, Nintendo GameFreak. 

And you call yourself a Pokemon Master!

 

Story is alright, but haven't finished it yet (though I know the spoiler because reasons, and it was obvious). It's just so damn wordy compared to all the previous games.

 

I'm not entirely impressed with all the new Pokemon. I'm a little miffed that I can't get Vikavolt until near end of the game. I love me Bug/Electric (Galvantula FTW), but I don't want to lug around Charjabug for 90% of the game. Also the hell is with so many of these new Pokemon having such low Speed stat?

[Strangelove]

Doom. I really really liked it, but Im not seeing why the campaign was supposed to be so good. Its fine, but not exceptional like the actual gameplay.

[TheMightyEthan]

That's kind of how I felt about Titanfall 2: the gameplay was great, and the campaign was good, but it wasn't mindblowingly "top 3 fps campaigns ever" good like people were acting.

 

Though I guess I do feel like replaying it so that says something.

[toxicitizen]

When people said the Doom campaign was amazing, it never even occurred to me that they might be referring to anything other than the gameplay. I mean, it's Doom. You're on Mars and there's demons. What more could you possibly expect? Beyond that, all you need is fun combat and level design that supports it. And that's exactly what I got out of it so I can't say I disagree with the general sentiment that it was amazing.

 

I do know what you mean, though. I felt the same way about Wolfenstein: The New Order. I loved it but it did feel like everyone else was seeing something in it that I wasn't.

[TheMightyEthan]

IMO in order for it to be a great campaign you need it to come together into a cohesive whole that feels great as a unit, not merely great gameplay in a collection of well-designed levels.

 

Titanfall 2's campaign, for instance, could have been almost as good if it were a series of unrelated levels, without any kind of story tying them together. 99% of the engagement came out of the gameplay/level design, there was no sense of narrative urgency or any kind of overall climax (I mean, looking at the plot I can tell what was supposed to be the climax, but it didn't feel like one while playing).

 

Which is not to say the game isn't great or worth playing, because it totally is, and even most of these individual campaign levels are great, it's just that I wouldn't call the campaign itself amazing as a whole.

 

Writing this has also got me thinking about music, and specifically how Halo (before they fired Marty) use d it so well to reinforce the excitement/downtime curve. Whenever I think of my favorite parts of Halo the music is always right there (and sometimes more vivid than the level itself), but with Titanfall they barely used music, or it was entirely forgettable.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, that's fair. I think that's something to be judged on a game-to-game basis, though. I can't speak for Titanfall 2 because I haven't played it. But I think Doom actually has more of a story (and characterization for the Doom marine) than it honestly ever needed to have. Some scientist went insane and opened a portal to Hell. You're the motherfucking Doom Slayer and it's up to you to close that shit up and curb stomp a whole bunch of demons in the process. I mean, maybe I went in with low expectations but to me that's all Doom needs to be as long as the gameplay is great.

 

Although, to be fair, it does have some pretty solid visual design (the Titan's Realm level pretty much outdoes Brutal Legend as far as being a metal album cover come to life) and a kick-ass soundtrack.

 

 

So there is a little more to it than just gameplay + level design.

Edited December 9, 2016 by FLD

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, and I haven't played Doom, which is why I keep going back to Titanfall.

[Eleven]

Press X to Not Die.

 

It's a stupid game probably best played when drunk... or sleepy. Man if the acting or script was better it would have been really fun though.

[danielpholt]

Press X to Not Die.

 

It's a stupid game probably best played when drunk... or sleepy. Man if the acting or script was better it would have been really fun though.

 

 

....the fuck is this?

[TheMightyEthan]

Just finished StarCraft 2.  An excellent close to the trilogy.

[deanb]

The Room 3

 

So far gotten 2 of the 4 endings. I imagine getting the rest wouldn't be too hard.

[FMW]

Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight

 

Well it turns out that if you go into classic mode there's no Fafnir Knights, no voice acting, and basically no plot.  Just a team of five player created units and 25 floors of pain in the ass dungeon crawling between you and the credits scroll.

 

So yeah, fuck story mode.  I had a blast with this and absolutely cannot wait for Etrian Odyssey 5.  These Untold remakes have been interesting, but the story mode is something I always skip and the new "grimoire stone" upgrade system is a convoluted mess.  I've needed to actively avoid certain features to get my pure Etrian Odyssey hit.  By all accounts EO 5 continues in the tradition of the main line and will not force me to avoid certain features to get my fix.  It will be the pure product unfiltered.

 

Final file timer:  57 hours 3 minutes.

 

The party:  Two tigers in front, two archers in back, a medic in the middle.  Magic is for the weak.

[Mister Jack]

Got to level 99 and beat the superboss of Final Fantasy XV.  Just a few more trophies to clean up and the platinum will be mine!

[CorgiShinobi]

Pokemon Moon

 

There's still post-game stuff that I can do, but the end beating Elite Four and Champion is what I did the other night. I made it more challenging for myself because I decided to change up my team comp near the end. So while I had Pokemon between Lv. 58-61, I had two Pokemon that were Lv. 49. I definitely made use of the Max Revives and Max Potions that were handed to me in the game. I also swear there must be some modifier that makes 70% accuracy moves even less accurate. I missed Blizzard three times in a row. After that battle I replaced it with Ice Beam on my Ninetales.

 

Anywho, I finished with my starter, Decidueye, though I really contemplated using other Ghost-type Pokemon. What ultimately made me keep him was that he does learn one more Flying-type move, Brave Bird. I did train up an Alolan Raichu, but I already had so many glass cannons on my team, and Vikavolt is such a great Electric-type, I swapped him out.

 

I had Salazzle, and since I caught another female Salandit, I was able to trade for an Alolan Vulpix (from France)! Once it leveled up enough, I gave it an Ice Stone for Alolan Ninetales. I had Midnight Form Lycanroc for a long time and was tempted to swap it out for for the Midday Form I had caught. It even had a Nature that was negatively affecting it's Attack stat, but it still pulled through and I was already two Pokemon short of a full Lv. 60 team anyway.

 

The last member of my team was Vaporeon. Brought it old school and it felt odd not to have a strong Water-type on my team. Granted, I had a killer Araquanid, but my team was already weak to Rock-types that I didn't need another one. It's a shame because it single-handily helped me bring down Po Town.

[FMW]

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.

 

BOY I wish this game was better.  What if all the polish, care, and money in the world was spent on a JRPG where the basic building blocks of the experience (combat, story, and worldbuilding) were all bad?  That's Ni No Kuni.  Combat is 90% of the time mindless attack mashing, and 100% of the time easy.  There's no real risk/reward relationship involved in combat decisions guiding how you play or which critters you use.  Just pick what you like and dump out them attacks.  If you pick a magic type critter one pick the magic type attack from the menu instead.  Boom, you can now beat the game.  The AI will handle the healing.

 

The story is playing with some powerful themes at the beginning and end, but the bulk of the game in the middle does nothing to communicate, elaborate, or reinforce them.  It's an idea for a good story with 50 hours of JRPG fetch quest storytelling replacing all the substance.  Oliver starts in one place with his grief and he ends at the other side of said grief, but the game doesn't really do a good job (or even bother trying) showing how his experiences in the fantasy world help teach him the lessons to overcome his grief.  It's just like, I dunno.  He's overcome enough dungeons now and once an RPG character has cleared x number of zones and side quests self actualization is achieved.  It's implied character growth, not communicated character growth.

 

And the world... for what it's worth, the fairy tales in the Wizards companion are dope.  Some of the writing there is great, way better than the writing in the actual game.  The PROBLEM is that the good writing of stories, history, etc in the Wizard's companion is entirely disconnected from and unnecessary for the, you know, interactive video game.  And the world as presented in the video game is bland and lame.  I get that they're doing the "fairy tale world" thing, but that doesn't excuse the stodgy traditionalism of everything.  An interesting exposition dump in the menu isn't the same as a well built world, as FF 13 proved all those years ago.

 

Such a bummer.  There are so many good JRPGs that suffer for limited budgets, and the one JRPG that had all the stops blown out was just not a very good one.  Your appreciation of this game will be entirely based on how far excellent graphics, music, and a nostalgic PS1 JRPG era design philosophy will carry you.

[toxicitizen]

Rise of the Tomb Raider.

 

Well, that certainly scratched that Uncharted itch I've had from being unable to play U4. Pretty great game overall. It's been too long since I played the first one to really compare the two but I do have a couple of nitpicks. First, the story. I remember really enjoying the whole "group stranded on weird island trying to survive" thing but in this one it took a while for me to get into it. I played the first 6 hours or so in short bursts and then went a few days without touching the game at all. I was enjoying it while I was playing but once I was outside the game there was basically no urge to play whatsoever. I only really got into it once I started ignoring the story and just went exploring for collectibles and clearing optional tombs. The gameplay is really where this game shines the most. The story eventually picked up but it almost felt like a shittier retelling of Uncharted 2's plot. It wasn't bad but I was a little disappointed by it.

 

The other issue I have is about the level design. I could be wrong here. Like I said, it's been a while since I played the first one. But I feel like this one cut back on the metroidvania aspect a bit. There were a handful of open areas that almost felt like mini open-worlds with little nooks and crannies that were locked behind traversal items but the map felt more linear and less interconnected overall. This makes me slightly worried that the next one will go full open-world. I'm so fucking sick of series going open-world for no goddamn reason. Open-worlds aren't inherently better, damn it!

 

Anyway, glad to have finally played it. Looking forward to an eventual sequel regardless but hopefully I'm wrong about the direction it'll take.

 

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

 

Lara Croft Go.

 

Finished this one like a week ago but I figured I might as well hold off and post it along with RotTR. There isn't a lot to say about it, if you liked Hitman Go, you'll like this one as well. I liked how they went for a more "cinematic" presentation and made it feel like more of an adventure game. That definitely felt like a better fit for Tomb Raider.

 

The puzzle design wasn't as good as in Hitman, though. I can count on one hand the number of puzzles that weren't painfully obvious. The levels themselves also had less replay value since there weren't any optional challenges like in Hitman Go that encouraged different playstyles. The only reason to replay any level was if you missed some of the collectibles. That was a little disappointing but it's hard to complain too much at that price. 

 

Definitely down for Deus Ex Go now. Hopefully it won't take forever to release on Steam.

 

 

I was initially planning to make this a triple entry along with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light but I played the first level and... yeah, I don't think that one's for me. It wasn't terrible or anything, so I might give it another shot at some point. But right now I just had no desire whatsoever to continue playing it. Not exactly a great impression for a first level to make.

[Thursday Next]

Dishonored 2. Completed a low chaos Emily run. Might go through again at some point with a chaotic other dude. Might just wait till/if they offer an NG+ option.

[TheMightyEthan]

I believe the NG+ option is on the beta patch branch right now, so it shouldn't be too long until it hits the stable branch.

[Thursday Next]

PS4... I won't hold my breath.

[Mr. GOH!]

Well, that was your bad choice to make, Thursday.

[TheMightyEthan]

Ah, don't know why I just assumed you were on PC... Anyway, the patch for NG+ is supposedly (according to the official blog as of November 18) coming in December, and they didn't specify a platform, so it should be coming to console too in the near future.

 

Blog post: https://bethesda.net/en/article/6d1WZlmqe4sUmkQEAo2qSe/dishonored-2-play-your-way

 

There was actually a new blog post on the 14th that said the NG+ patch is releasing on the 19th (today) for all platforms:

 

https://bethesda.net/en/article/1xv1an5Nj6qiOigcme0Qso/dishonored-2-update-new-game-plus-mode

Edited December 19, 2016 by TheJollyEthan