Games You've Beaten in 2018

[RainMan]

Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, Super Mario Odyssey, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (both versions), Pikmin, Pikmin 2, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth/Antibirth, Punch-Out!! (Wii)

[MetalCaveman]

Ghost Recon Wildlands: Special Operation 2, this was the Rainbow Six Siege mission. It was fun, felt a bit longer than the Splinter Cell one, though that's mostly because you're driving around a bunch of places. Though I don't know much about Siege, as long as you know anything about other RS games you should get most of what's going on here.

 

Spoiler

The last scene is also quite the departure from the Splinter Cell mission where everyone treated Sam with respect, in this case, things came close to a confrontation between Rainbow and the Ghosts, though the Ghosts have no problem with Rainbow, the CIA does not like it when people with useful information get away from them.  

 

[Mal]

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero 

 

While it's not as good as Pirate's Curse, I think it is a solid entry. 

[Mister Jack]

I started playing Yakuza 0 on steam.  It's my first entry into the series.  Getting it to recognize my controller was a frustrating son of a bitch, but once I was past the usual PC gaming pains I started having a pretty good time with it.  It definitely isn't "Japanese GTA" the way Sleeping Dogs is Hong Kong GTA, but honestly I'm kind of glad.  I'm a little tired of open world crime games.  This is more like a really good looking River City Ransom where you get a very small but tightly packed town to run around in and beat up bad guys while occasionally doing some shopping or some pretty fun minigames.  I think this actually has the most fun bowling minigame I've ever come across.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

I just finished Uncharted 4 last night, and it is hands down the best Uncharted I've played (Lost Legacy is next, and I've heard that may be better). They fixed the combat from previous entries, it's no longer just waves and waves of bullet sponges, and there are a lot more pure exploration/traversal bits, which are my favorite part. I also really liked the stealth implementation, which is unusual for a game that isn't primarily a stealth game.

 

Last but certainly not least 

Spoiler

There was no supernatural people or anything at the end. I get that that's part of the Indiana Jones formula, but it had been feeling to formulaic to me, so I'm glad they changed it.

 

Basically this game was everything I've always wanted Uncharted to be.

 

[TCP]

Would you go as far to say it's the best 3rd person shooter of this gen??

[toxicitizen]

On 8/4/2018 at 11:28 AM, Mister Jack said:

I started playing Yakuza 0 on steam.  It's my first entry into the series.  Getting it to recognize my controller was a frustrating son of a bitch, but once I was past the usual PC gaming pains I started having a pretty good time with it.  It definitely isn't "Japanese GTA" the way Sleeping Dogs is Hong Kong GTA, but honestly I'm kind of glad.  I'm a little tired of open world crime games.  This is more like a really good looking River City Random where you get a very small but tightly packed town to run around in and beat up bad guys while occasionally doing some shopping or some pretty fun minigames.  I think this actually has the most fun bowling minigame I've ever come across.

 

Did you post this in the wrong thread or do you count getting the DS4 to work as "beating" the game?  

 

And yeah, I was a little surprised to find out the series still hasn't actually become an open-world game. I have no idea if it'll get bigger or unlock new areas but the initial Kamurocho map is actually pretty small. Little more than a dozen city blocks or so, and really compact ones at that. And I think it's perfect like that. I've seen people asking for a proper open-world with driving and I think those fuckers are out of their goddamned minds. It wouldn't be the same game at all. The current JRPG/brawler formula is too unique and fun to ruin it with tired open-world design.

[Mister Jack]

Yes.  Yes I did post it in the wrong thread.  But I agree, I like it fine the way it is.  Making the map bigger just to force you to drive all over the place would make it less fun for me.  There's plenty of fun things to do all within walking distance in Kamurocho so I don't see how making the map five times bigger and spreading everything farther apart would make it better.

[TheMightyEthan]

@Ultra TCP I actually can't think of a better one off the top of my head*. Not that I play a lot of TPS.

 

*I don't count HZD or RotTR as TPS.

[TheMightyEthan]

I finished Uncharted: Lost Legacy a few days ago, and I think it tops even U4, just barely. It plays basically the same, but at half the length I never got to the "are we there yet?" point like I eventually did with U4, as much as I liked that game. I did kind of miss the globe-trotting, hunting-down-the-ancient-secrets part, but overall I think I had slightly more fun with it.

[MetalCaveman]

Prey, did not expect that ending.  Went with a combat focused build, using only human abilities and security weapons, pretty fun.  Only part I didn't enjoy much was near the end when 

Spoiler

Dahl and his army of operators showed up, those things are annoying.  

 

[Mister Jack]

Castlevania 1, 2, and 3

 

I never beat these games as a kid and I've been on a big Castlevania kick ever since they announced Simon and Richter for Smash so I decided to finally beat these on the NES Classic.  I used a walkthrough for 2 because that game is way too cryptic but other than that I abided by my usual rule of no save-scumming.  1 and 3 are definitely hard games, but after Ghosts and Goblins they didn't feel nearly as difficult as I remember.  The trick that makes them a lot easier is to take your time and not jump too often, which I think is a natural instinct for a lot of people.  You have much more control over Simon/Trevor on the ground than in the air, so unless jumping is the only way to dodge an attack you're usually better off just walking, ducking, or whipping to avoid damage.  Pretty great games once you let go of your frustration.

[toxicitizen]

EXAPUNKS

 

Yeah, this is definitely my favorite Zachtronics game so far. I've always preferred their actual programming games over the abstracted ones but this one has the others beat in basically every single way. More interesting story, better soundtrack, cooler setting (gotta love those 90s hacker aesthetics!) and even production values! It still looks like a Zachtronics game but there's actually voice acting this time as well as some very basic "cutscenes" for some story moments. My only complaint would be the lack of a gif maker like in Opus Magnum but it really wouldn't make sense in a game like this.

 

I think this might also be the fastest I ever beat one of these (less than a week, I think?). Most of them remain unfinished (planning to rectify that very soon, starting with Shenzhen I/O) but I basically powered through more than half the game in just a couple days. I only had the final puzzle left to do today. I think it's probably easier than the others because I didn't get stuck very often. The final level was big spike in complexity but other than that there were only two others that I got really stuck on. And both times I solved my problem by going through the zines and realizing that I was missing something obvious.

 

Speaking of, I'm realizing now that having a physical version of the manual is definitely the optimal way to play these games. It's not just that it's more immersive, there's also something kinda tedious about alt-tabbing out of the game to read a pdf and I think I found myself not doing it as often as I should have in previous games because of it. Being able to pick them up and start leafing through them without ever having to leave the game meant I did it way more often in EXAPUNKS. Now I'm really glad I ordered that Shenzhen I/O binder and assembled it for my replay/attempt to finally beat it! 

[toxicitizen]

SHENZHEN I/O

 

Holy fucking shit, I did it! This was much harder than EXAPUNKS. No wonder I got stuck and stopped the first time around. I was stuck on some puzzles for freaking days! In EXAPUNKS, I could mostly just write my code normally without having to worry about limitations too much. Here, I'd constantly run out of space, both on the chips and in the microcontrollers. So many times I had an almost working solution but needed to find a way to squeeze in another instruction or two. So frustrating! But that just makes it all the more satisfying when you finally figure it out. There was one particular puzzle near the end that seemed impossible at first glance.  So I got a pen and paper and started trying to find a pattern of some kind that I could exploit. It felt pretty great when my first idea worked flawlessly and I ended up solving the puzzle in like half an hour. Especially after being stuck on the previous one for like two days.

 

I still have the bonus campaign to do but that can wait. It's made up of user-submitted puzzles, so it kinda feels optional. Now I'm really tempted to go back to TIS-100 and try to finish that one too, though.

[Mister Jack]

Spider-Man

 

I'm going out of town for a week so I wanted to get through the story before I left. Took maybe 20 hours? I still have a bunch of side stuff to do. But yeah, this is easily the best Spider-Man game ever made, maybe even the best Marvel game. Without getting into spoilers, the story and the way certain characters are treated is really compelling, and there are some new ideas here to ensure it's not a direct adaptation of anything, kind of like the Arkham games.  Combat and web slinging feel damn good. Anyone with even a passing interest in Spider-Man should play this game. If I have any complaints, it's that the MJ sections began to wear out their welcome towards the end, but that's a small knock on an otherwise great game.

[TheMightyEthan]

I finished Life Is Strange: Before the Storm a couple days ago.

 

It was quite good, way better than I was expecting. Might be one of the best prequels I've ever played/seen (reboots aside). They managed to make it about events prior to the first game without tying everything in to the events of that game. It feels like its own story.

[Mr. GOH!]

Spider-Man. I finished the main story and all non-crime side missions and tasks, aside from the 'secret' photo spots I unlocked just before the Point of No Return.

 

Easily the best Marvel game I have ever played and as good as the Arkham games. The gameplay is super fun, though I am not a huge fan of the number of times the game has too many cut scenes involving Spidey fighting or engaging ins Spider-Manly heroics that ought to have been wrapped into gameplay, even as an elaborate QTE. It is just such a joy to move through the world and fight as Spider-Man throughout the game; I fast traveled maybe half a dozen times during my entire playthrough.

 

The characters and plot are interesting and very in keeping with a Spider-Man near the height of his powers without going through too many of his iconic supervillains. I enjoyed this version of the Marvel universe fronted by Spidey, though it sometimes felt weird that no other superheroes intervened in the kind of massive shit going down. Things ramp up enough that it's strange Iron Man or Daredevil or any of the other superheroes in this version of the Marvel universe don't try to rein things in. As an aside, I didn't see any references to the X-men, just non-Mutant Marvel heroes and villains in the game, but it is *not* the MCU at all. As far as Spidey's situation goes, Peter Parker as a scientist and MJ as a journalist works very well, as does Aunt May running a large charity, all departures from film and comic depictions of Spider-Man. Osborne also works as a politician as well as corporate leader. In some ways, the changes to MJ and Osborne also felt like a move towards a Superman-like universe in which MJ is a LL stand-in while Osborne is like Lex Luthor with a little more sleaziness and a lot more hair.

 

I could talk about the game all day, but in my gut it does not feel like a GOTY. It is excellent and I would suggest that any gamer play it, but it feels just a little to reined in and weirdly small to be GOTY. It's excellence also lies in the fact that it presents the absolute best version of a lot of open-world tropes that have been done to death, from tower-climbing to unlock the map to side missions. It feels like the developers sought iteration over innovation so it ends up seeming like a masterpiece open-world game from 2010. But it's also so good, guys, you all should play it!

[toxicitizen]

Yakuza 0

 

I guess I forgot to post about it after finishing the story a couple weeks ago. My only experience with the series was playing the original on PS2 over a decade ago but I had been hearing so many great things about the series in recent years that I was pretty excited to get back to it. My expectations were probably unreasonably high and uh... yeah, the game completely destroyed them. This is a solid GOTY candidate for me.

 

It's packed with content almost to a fault. I spent easily half my playtime just fucking around with mini-games and progressing through each character's management mode. To the point where it was actually distracting me from the main story and I had to force myself to get back to it and finish the game. And the crazy thing is that the main story is easily the best part of the game!

 

Considering the more comedic tone of stuff I had seen posted online, I'm not sure what I expected to be honest. The vast majority of side-quests are played for laughs but the main story is played completely straight and is actually a really solid crime thriller full of twists and turns. The cutscene direction is also phenomenal and easily rivals something Kojima would do. It also really benefits from being used as an entry point into the series because then you don't know who's coming back in "future" games, so when people start dying left and right you have no idea who has time paradox invincibility.

 

So yeah, I'm really glad they finally got around to porting this one and I really hope they keep them coming. I know it's supposed to be a step down from 0 due to being heavily based on the PS2 original, but I can't wait for Kiwami because I want more! The rumor is they're porting 6 next year but I hope we'll also get Kiwami 2 ASAP because I'm hearing really good things about it.

 

And now the real reason I came here:

 

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

 

I wrapped up the main story last night. It took me around 75 hours (doing every side-quest and messing around with the forge and casino a lot) but I still have the post-game to do and apparently it's not optional like in the others. Not sure what that means just yet.

 

This is a pretty damn good JRPG, all things considered. The fact that I'm actually eager to jump into the post-game and keep playing is probably the highest compliment I can give it. I'm honestly kind of amazed that a JRPG this freaking long without the name Trails attached to it has managed to keep me engaged all the way through. The story is fairly generic but it has its moments. The second half of the game isn't as good as the first one because you're mostly revisiting places you've already been and I thought the ending was a little underwhelming, but those are ultimately very minor nitpicks. This is very much a game about the journey and that part of it was thoroughly entertaining.

 

I'm kind of excited to see what the post-game is about now, and since I'm already most of the way there I think I'll go for all the achievements. I have another week or so to kill until Valkyria Chronicles 4, anyway.

[CorgiShinobi]

Last night I Platinum'd Marvel's Spider-Man.

 

I did everything aside from the Secret Photo Ops before the final boss fight. You can really challenge yourself during the game, but for the trophies you don't have to stress about getting everything. Kinda surprising, but nice that there isn't a deep grind. Before I put the game down I was at three Superior levels (anything over 50). I had to use a guide to find only one Secret Photo Op because I naturally got 49/50 just swinging around. Secret costume is neat, but nothing to stress about if you don't have it... yet!

 

Like I was saying in the Spider-Man thread, definitely has GOTY qualities to it. Definitely the best Spider-Man game, and honestly one would hope after the last couple mediocre titles. The game takes parts of all Spider-Man media to make this strangely alluring Spidey universe. No really, it takes ques from all the movies, comics, and other games. Almost like a tribute to Spider-Man as a whole. Yeah, it's kinda odd that there's never been a Green Goblin for this Peter, and at the end it appears that...

 

Harry is possibly "infected" by the Venom symbiote. Well, at least this universe's Venom-like entity.

 

And I believe Jim Sterling and some others describing J Jonah Jameson as this game's Alex Jones is a perfect analogy. Granted, I feel like you love-hate just for his absurd assumptions and pompous attitude towards anyone who disagrees with him. Mary Jane is great, though some of her segments were honestly wasted. Her last two were really what all of them should have been from the start. Same goes for the other character, though I ran into glitches with his last two missions.

 

Yuri Lowenthal does an excellent Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Really delivers the highs and lows of Peter life both as Parker and Spidey. The ending is so damn powerful that you feel the struggle he goes through with two of his personal icons. I'd type more but my laptop is gonna die, but just an absolutely amazing and spectacular game!

[toxicitizen]

Dragon Quest XI post-game done!

 

 

Whew, that was a long one. And yeah, the post-game is pretty much mandatory. If the main game feels like it includes its own sequel, then the post-game feels like the end of the "trilogy" if that makes any sense. It actually expands on stuff only vaguely hinted at in the main game and wraps everything up in a neat little bow. It kinda sucks that the big post-game dungeon consists mostly of re-used maps but the quality of the story more than makes up for it.

 

I really need to play the rest of the series at some point. DQVIII and now XI are both among the best JRPGs I've ever played and although I kinda lost interest in DQVII after 40 hours or so I'm still really curious about 1 through 6. Let's hope they get ported to PC sooner rather than later.

[TCP]

Spider-Man

Man, they went ALL in on that ending. The best game I've played all year. The best super hero game. The best Ass Creed / Arkham / etc etc game. 

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition - I enjoyed it except the mandatory racing bits so completed all the optional stuff except the races and collectathons. The two DLC were enjoyable too.

 

Three Fourths Home - was OK. More an interactive story than a game but it didn't outstay its welcome. The epilogue worked out OK but seemed unnecessary.

[TheMightyEthan]

Spider-Man

 

Easily GOTY so far. Nothing else even comes close. It was just such a blast to play. Sure, it's largely based on systems other games have done before, but they're all just so perfectly executed. God of War was good, but this game is Amazing.

[Mr. GOH!]

God of War is my GOTY so far, LOL.

Edited October 2, 2018 by Mr. GOH!

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Oceanhorn. Probably the worst game I've played to completion? I feel sorry for people who think it's an acceptable alternative to Zelda. It is not.