Games You've Beat MMXIX

[MetalCaveman]

Halo 4.

 

 

One thing that bugs me: In Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, Lasky is supposed to be the captain of the Infinity right? Also, from what I can remember, he looked like a badass there. In the game though, he doesn't take command of the ship until the end, and he looks quite different too.  

 

I said I was going to play Halo Wars 2 afterwards, but ended up just starting a new playthrough of Halo 5 just for the hell of it.  Apparently the first time I played it I finished it on Heroic which I find hard to believe, this time playing on normal though as I just want to go through the story and have some fun, not sure what I was thinking back then.   

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, Halo 5 on Heroic is no joke. 4 and 5 are definitely harder than the first 3, although it's not the kind of hard I like, they just made the Prometheans into bullet sponges.

[Mister Jack]

Ninja Gaiden (NES)

 

Jesus fucking Christ, this is by far the hardest game I've ever beaten in my life, but for the wrong reasons. I've been playing this off and on for half a year on the NES Classic, trying to finally finish it just so I could say I did. The thing about this game is that the first five stages aren't even really all that hard. At least, they weren't for me. Reasonably challenging, yes, but nothing I couldn't handle.
 

Then you get to stage 6 and everything goes to hell. This is the game that forced me to confront the fact that Ninja Gaiden just isn't very well programmed. There are way too enemies who will instantly respawn once you kill them, and they will keep respawning until the end of time. Whenever you get hit you just so happen to get knocked toward the nearest pit regardless of which way you were facing when you got hit. But the thing I absolutely cannot forgive is that if you die even one time to the final boss (who is a mother fucker) on stage 6-4 you get sent back to stage 6-1 even if you still have lives left. They don't even have the courtesy of refilling your health when you enter the boss room! This, by far, is why it took so long for me to beat this damn game. Not only will you probably have to beat stage 6, one of the hardest levels ever made, multiple times, but you need to get all the way to 6-4 with health and preferably items to spare if you want to even stand a chance. This game is crazy stingy with its items too, and naturally if you die a single time you not only lose the items you're carrying but the energy you've collected for your subweapon is chopped in half.

 

Oh, and fuck this jump straight to hell. This might be the hardest platforming jump in all of gaming because that knife thrower and that stupid bird NEVER STOP RESPAWNING. The only way I could consistently get past it--and I probably had to get through it about 30 times--is by glitching the knife thrower off of the screen before making the jump. Even then you still have to kill the bird mid-jump with perfect timing. Beating Ninja Gaiden is a nightmare and if it didn't have unlimited continues I probably wouldn't have been able to beat it for the rest of my life. Sheer perseverance got me through this one and I doubt I'd even be able to repeat it, but at least I can say I've beaten it now.

[CorgiShinobi]

I got as far as the second phase of the final boss and that's where I quit. Going past that infamous jump and having to repeat all of Stage 6 I don't know how many times, it was too grueling for me to take anymore. Congrats on beating it!

[TCP]

Link's Awakening.

Spoiler

Turns out it was all a dream. Wow!!

 

[danielpholt]

2 hours ago, Ultra TCP said:

Link's Awakening.

  Reveal hidden contents

Turns out it was all a dream. Wow!!

 

 

Finished this too.

 

How'd you feel about the dungeon design towards the end? Kinda felt to me like they'd decided to just throw as many screens (and thus repetition) at you in the hopes it'd increase difficulty when all it did was reduce my enjoyment.

 

Aside from that, it's a really charming experience.

[TCP]

9 minutes ago, danielpholt said:

 

Finished this too.

 

How'd you feel about the dungeon design towards the end? Kinda felt to me like they'd decided to just throw as many screens (and thus repetition) at you in the hopes it'd increase difficulty when all it did was reduce my enjoyment.

 

Aside from that, it's a really charming experience.

 

Sorry, are you talking the level design in the last few dungeons or 

Spoiler

finding your way through the egg??

 

[Mr. GOH!]

Gears of War 4.

 

I got it for free with Gears 5. 

 

Gears 4 is boring and dumb and repetitive and its design seems like something from 2008. Thankfully it's also short. 

 

I am somewhat amazed by just how much better Gears 5 is, though I'm only halfway through. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Blue Lions

 

I'm putting this in here again because the Blue Lions campaign was different enough from the Black Eagles one. It actually took me longer than Black Eagles did, which surprised me because I was more liberal about skipping conversations and stuff. I'm playing Link's Awakening now, but after that I'll probably go back to this for Golden Deer.

[danielpholt]

On 9/30/2019 at 5:47 AM, The Cowboy JRPGing Poet said:

 

Sorry, are you talking the level design in the last few dungeons or 

  Reveal hidden contents

finding your way through the egg??

 

 

Didn't have any issues with the part you're referring to (although I did get a hint that made it much, much easier than it otherwise would have been). I was referring to the final three dungeons. Less is sometimes more and I think the devs totally forget that when designing those fucking things.

 

Anyways. I finished Untitled Goose Game. It's fun. Probably not the GOTY contender that the meme squad would have you think but its fun for sure.

[Mal]

Blue Lion route of Three Houses

 

That was quite the change from the Golden Deer route. Overall I liked it better but story leaves some things to be desired. Also this build your own epilogue isn't my cup of tea. While a fine game but honestly, I don't think Three Houses will age well. 

 

Gameplay is not hard unless you do Maddening which just makes the it into a game of turtling. I never quite felt challenged until the very end of the Blue Lions route on Hard. It was a simple fix to get what I want though. It never felt like there's a good balance in the game... 

 

Story and character motivation wise, you have to play all routes to get the full picture and even then the outcome is up in the air with no single route answering everything (I'll report back once I get Black Eagles and another route done). 

 

Blue Lions and Golden Deer based spoilers. Read at your own risk since I want to vent. 

Spoiler

Mole People versus an alien invasion. 

 

The overarching storyline seems to be pushed by a group (people behind the scene in the Empire that did things to Lysthea and El) that amounts to Mole People fighting against Invading Alien dragons (Sothis and the Church of Serios). This stuff is basically left out of the Blue Lions route but gets really weird in the Golden Deer route. Hell, it's the basis of the end game for them. FUCK, there's a god damn nuke in the game sent by the Mole People in an attempt to kill Blythe. Then after, El didn't turn into a damn monster but I did fight the King of Liberation who is for some reason was hidden by the Mole People but only got activated like the Androids in Dragonball Z after the Golden Deer wiped out the Mole People. 

 

Like damn man, this shit is on crack but again, it's largely missing from the Blue Lions besides Eldegard turning into a monster and there's the Mole People mages that GTFO the last battle if you kill their main guy that's conveniently up front... 

Ugh... Fine game but yeah, the more I think about it, the more the game feels half finished which I attribute to the three main routes. Who knows... maybe the April 30th story DLC will be awesome (Xenoblade 2 DLC spanks the main game for me). 

Edited October 11, 2019 by Mal

[TheMightyEthan]

I didn't read your spoiler because I haven't played Golden Deer yet, but I don't understand what you mean by it feeling half-finished? Honestly, I've played Black Eagles secret route and Blue Lions route and both of them felt like complete games to me, I would have been happy if either one had been the only route. I still think the Black Eagles secret route feels like the "true" route, but I won't be able to say for sure until I play Golden Deer (and honestly probably until I play the "regular" Black Eagles route too).

[MetalCaveman]

Halo 5

 

Yeah, normal is way better than Heroic, didn't remember much about my first playthrough until I got to the first Warden fight, there I remembered how that fight was hell the first time I played.  

 

Used this chance to collect all intel thingies on each mission. \m/ \m/

[TheMightyEthan]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

 

I really enjoyed my time with it, and it was a little less obtuse than I feared given that it's a straight remake of an almost 30 year old game. There's an in-game hint system that really helps, although there were still about 3 bits that were really "Guide, Damn It", that I never would have figured out if I hadn't been able to google the answer. Overall though my biggest complaint was that I wish it were longer, it only took me about 15 hours from start to finish, and that's with spending a good chunk of time on side activities.

[toxicitizen]

Destiny 2

 

That's all the campaigns up to and including the Forsaken expansion. They were pretty fun but kind of uneven.

 

The original Red War campaign is a fun series of missions but has a fairly bland story. Curse of Osiris has some really neat bits of lore and the Infinite Forest is a really cool setting but it ultimately feels a bit samey and padded even at only ~3 hours long. Warmind is super short but so fucking sweet that it might actually end up being my favorite. Fighting a Dune-esque Worm God on Mars is definitely my idea of a good time.

 

Then there's Forsaken. I really like the premise and it was nice to get another meatier campaign but I thought the execution was a bit underwhelming. The opening mission tops anything that was in the Red War but it immediately goes downhill from there. I dig the whole bounty hunter western kinda vibe they were going for but a lot of these missions felt less like a proper campaign and more like the kinda throwaway missions you'd get in a Ubisoft-style open-world game. Plus I'm pretty sure some of them just straight up re-used the same sections of the map. It had some great cutscenes though and I really enjoyed how everything played out in the end, with the final mission at least ending the campaign on a high note. And I'm a year late to this but RIP Robot Nathan Fillion. You will be missed.

 

I think I'm gonna wait a bit to see how the weekly grind to 950 treats me before deciding if I wanna get Shadowkeep or wait for a sale. FOMO is kinda making me want to get it before the current season ends so that I don't miss out on all these seasonal rewards but that honestly just kinda makes the whole GaaS thing seem insidious and exploitative...

Edited October 18, 2019 by FLD

[TheMightyEthan]

I've always been one to feel the FOMO on the seasonal stuff, but Destiny has a tendency of making all the old stuff obsolete with each new expansion anyway so you're really not going to miss out on much.

 

*Edit - I just realized I never bought Forsaken. I'd be tempted, but it's still $25, and that plus Shadowkeep would be a full $60...

[toxicitizen]

7 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I've always been one to feel the FOMO on the seasonal stuff, but Destiny has a tendency of making all the old stuff obsolete with each new expansion anyway so you're really not going to miss out on much.

 

*Edit - I just realized I never bought Forsaken. I'd be tempted, but it's still $25, and that plus Shadowkeep would be a full $60...

 

Yeah, since the campaigns are the main appeal for me I had to get Forsaken first and paying for the two at once is a tough sell. I feel like they should've reduced the price of Forsaken a bit more considering everything they made free in New Light. As for the old stuff being obsolete, I'm not sure how it was previously (I think they just overhauled how the seasons work again?) but this is what I'm talking about:

 

 

Not my screenshot but the bottom row are the season pass rewards, so for me they remain locked. So as my season rank goes up I only get the rewards from the top row and buying Shadowkeep/the current season pass would retroactively get me everything I've "missed" from the bottom row up to this point. It's so shamelessly designed to manipulate you into wanting to buy the fucking season pass lol.

 

But in my case, this GaaS bullshit ends up backfiring more often than not. Once a game gets its hooks fully into me, I start to feel like I have to play optimally and make sure to get everything I can and it just kinda starts to feel like work. So I just lose interest and stop playing entirely.

[MetalCaveman]

Halo Wars 2.

 

Though I feel like it had a bit too many "defend the base" missions, overall it was a pretty fun experience. I liked what they did with the last mission though, at first I was sure not having access to my own base would be annoying, but some careful management of reinforcements and placing units where they would be most effective ended up being more than enough. Except for Nightingales, those were flying all over the place.  

 

Thought the ending was rather abrupt, until that scene at the end, would love to see a Halo Wars 3 at some point.  

 

Are the DLCs worth it? They're not exactly cheap, but if they add some cool stuff I wouldn't mind.  

 

[TCP]

Dragon Quest XI

Probably the best JRPG I've ever played... sorry Persona 5. This game, man. It's essentially three games in one and I loved it. More games like this, please. 

 

EDIT: and before anyone says anything, yeah, I got the true ending. 

Edited November 5, 2019 by The Cowboy JRPGing Poet

[toxicitizen]

@The Cowboy JRPGing Poet Yeah, calling it "three games in one" makes it clear you got the true ending. Fuck, that game was great. Really hope they'll end up patching the Switch improvements into the PC version because I'd love an excuse to give it a replay at some point.

 

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

 

Destiny 2 Shadowkeep

 

Man, I'm glad I knew to expect a weaker campaign and didn't buy the expansion specifically for it like Forsaken because holy shit I would've been disappointed lol. It's not bad but it sure feels like the expansion was done on a tight budget and the campaign just wasn't a priority. Which makes sense given their breakup with Activision but it's a shame because the setting is actually really cool and creepy. But after that great opening mission, you're basically given a list of filler tasks to go do until it's time for the final mission.

 

Like, at least in Forsaken it made sense with the kind of story they were going for. Doing wanted bounties worked with the western tone of the plot and you were killing your way through the ranks to get to your real target. But here it's almost WoW-levels of "go get 12 monkey butts" shit. I mean, at one point one of your campaign objectives is literally "go do this strike". Like, some strikes are based on certain missions from the campaigns but here it wasn't a mission, it was the actual strike. Had to go through matchmaking and play with some asshole that just kept trying to rush past everything and dying because we weren't keeping up with him lol.

 

So yeah, maybe don't get this one for the campaign. Get it if you wanna chill on a haunted moon and kill nightmares and robots. I know I do, although I kinda hope the soft relaunch was successful enough to fund development of a proper campaign next time.

[MetalCaveman]

Days Gone

 

Holy shit that ending! \m/ \m/  

 

I went from not knowing much about this game and not really caring about it to having it be my GOTY.  

 

It does have some issues, I ran into a bug where I could not retrieve ammo from my bike, framerate goes to hell sometimes and textures had some trouble loading in some endgame areas, but even with all that, it's a really fun game.

 

The open world is actually fun to explore, and unlike some other game I never felt like I was being punished for going out of my way to go somewhere or for trying a different path. There are no cops/Unidad/Wolves/whatever that chase you if you mess up or anything like that, all obstacles and enemies you run into while exploring feel like they actually belong there, they're natural. You won't get chased by 40 thousand choppers if you bump into someone else, there are no enemy soldiers that spawn out of thin air if you accidentally enter a restricted area, nothing like that.

 

The stuff that you do run into is nowhere near as frustrating as the stuff I mentioned, and running into a horde while you're trying to reach a mission area is quite fun and somewhat scary.   Animals and freakers (zombies, but we don't call them zombies ) wander around and some of them can keep up with your bike, but it's still easy to outrun/eliminate most threats.

 

The map and the world itself are also pretty barren and it's hard to express how much I enjoyed that, particularly when compared to other games that have a trillion icons/missions/NPCs/etc. There's only a handful of camps, there's rarely a time where you have more than one or two missions active, usually a story mission and some side missions. Even with all camps, NERO checkpoints and ambush camps unlocked, the map is still easy to navigate and you never feel overwhelmed when looking at it.

 

Getting upgrades for your bike, along with more and better weapons really changes the game. The opening hour plays like a survival horror, enemies are deadly, your bike is kinda slow and ammo is scarce so avoiding confrontations is pretty important. Later on though, you pretty much turn into an unstoppable machine of death.  Except when it comes to hordes.

 

Hordes are one of the most fun aspects of the game. There's a couple that are story related and most of them you can just find while exploring. Fighting one requires knowing the layout of the land, entrances and exits, any places you can climb, dead ends, etc. You'll also want to bring a ton of ammo and traps as some hordes can have hundreds of enemies. The biggest one has 500 freakers or so, fighting it was fucking awesome.

 

Storywise, I can describe it as Sons of Anarchy meets The Walking Dead. There's some of the usual zombie stuff but it's executed in a fun way and Deacon is one of my favourite characters. At the start he seems like an asshole with a death wish, but as the story progresses and you learn more about how he ended up like that it makes sense, and he does start to change for the better. 

 

Spoiler

I love that he's kind of a psycho. I don't like most protagonists in zombie stories because they're always trying to be good guys who want to save everyone or something, Deacon is just like "you mess with me or the people I care, I'll kill you, no doubts, no questions asked".

 

There's a mission where you have to rescue someone kidnapped by these cultist dudes, and Deacon tells them "If anything happens to her I'll kill you! Even if nothing happens to her, you're all dead anyway!".  

 

 

Then there's the ending.

 

Spoiler

NERO is coming? The smart freakers are coming? Is there really nothing we can do? O'Brian being a smart freaker was a huge shock, out of all the things I thought would happen that didn't even cross my mind.  

 

There's stuff here for a direct sequel and even for sequels/spinoffs/DLC that follow other characters, so I do hope it did well enough for Bend Studio to explore some of those stories.

 

 

Shoutout to my aunt, she's the one who got it for me as a gift, otherwise I would have missed it. \m/ \m/

[toxicitizen]

The Surge

 

After a month away from it, I caved and bought the DLC so I could finish it already. It's uh... it's actually pretty good? That kinda came as a shock after the aggressively mediocre Lords of the Fallen but this might actually the biggest jump in quality from one game to the next that I've seen a developer make since Naughty Dog with Uncharted 1 -> Uncharted 2. I may be a little biased here, though, since I've wanted a Sci-fi soulslike for almost as long as the genre has existed. It's not perfect by any means but overall I really enjoyed my time with it.

 

The main issue with it was the level design, I think. It's not bad or anything but the layout is all twisty and interconnected like you'd expect from a proper soulslike and the shortcuts usually go through these identical maintenance vents. So combined with the industrial setting and art direction, everything ends up looking super samey and makes it really hard to find your way through certain areas. The second area of the game took me forever to finally be able to navigate from memory, I would keep forgetting which shortcuts led to where. And after about a month long break from the game, having to return to early areas for achievements or collectables was basically a nightmare and I had to do a bit of "how to get to x" googling.

 

It's really more of an annoyance than an actual problem, though, and it probably wouldn't be as big of a deal if you played the game without a break. But compared to the original Dark Souls where just thinking about it I can still make a mental map of almost the entire game, it just makes The Surge's level design stand out in a bad way. Other than that, the bosses are kind of underwhelming but that's pretty much it. The game overall is honestly super fun, the combat is fast but has this really satisfying weight to it and the story and side-quests are interesting enough (and sometimes depressingly dark lol). There's also this really cool system where if you want a specific rig, you need to find enemies that wear it and target/cut their limbs off to get parts to build it.

 

I think the game may have gone overboard with input buffering, though. In Dark Souls it leads to this very deliberate combat where you need to commit to your button presses. But I feel like The Surge maybe buffers more presses than it should because there's been a few times where in the heat of the moment I'd mash like a dumbass and it would suddenly feel unresponsive enough that I'd go "What the FUCK is happening right now?!"

 

Another point it gets over Lords of the Fallen is that the DLC isn't complete trash. Walk in the Park is actually one of the better areas of the entire game and even ties into the main story. The Good, the Bad and the Augmented is more like a set of challenge rooms that's fun but feels like a distraction more than a worthwhile addition to the game. And they both have "craft every single new piece of gear" achievements, so if you're an achievement hunter like me they end up padding the game out a little bit with the grinding for parts.

 

So yeah, I went in with low expectations but I was pleasantly surprised. Sign me up for The Surge 2!

[Mister Jack]

Death Stranding

 

This is one of those games that's going to be divisive for years to come. It is very much a Kojima game and if you didn't like Metal Gear Solid this is most certainly not going to change your mind. I think people will either love it or hate it with not much room in between. I personally loved it, though that doesn't mean I was never frustrated with it, but more on that later. People looked at this game and thought "What do you DO? It's not just delivering cargo the whole time is it?" I can say that yes, with a few story-related exceptions, for the most part the whole game revolves around making deliveries. However, this isn't completely aimless like No Man's Sky. There is a fascinating world and storyline tied to the deliveries you're making, and I can honestly say I have never seen a post-apocalypse premise quite like this one. Each delivery you make for the main mission reveals a little bit more about this world and all those confusing and enigmatic elements from the trailers are gradually peeled back until it actually starts to make a weird kind of sense. I "get" this universe now after finishing the game, and that's oddly satisfying.

 

Of course, if all you care about is the gameplay then whether or not you enjoy it is going to depend on your patience. The main gameplay loop is taking cargo from Point A to Point B. However, you often have a lot to contend with. Your cargo and all your supplies take up visible space on Sam's body, and if you weigh him down too much in one area it's going to affect his movement so you want to try to distribute the weight of what you carry evenly between his back, his shoulders, and his hip straps. There is an auto-optimize button to streamline this, but sometimes even then you will still want to manually rearrange certain items. Once you've got your cargo all sorted out you still have to worry about rough terrain, raider camps, bad weather, and invisible monsters called BTs that can seriously ruin your day and your cargo if they catch you. You have a shoulder mounted device that can help point out where and how far away the nearest BT is, but even with that you're going to run smack into one if you act recklessly. It does not pay to be rash in this game, because losing your balance or taking a hit will usually result in a piece of cargo flying off of you. While you can usually recover it, you will often be in situations where it's better to just run for your life and give up whatever you dropped as lost.

 

The neatest thing about this game is the online features. Kojima boasted that he was making a new genre of game. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I will say what he did with the asynchronous multiplayer is really neat. You know how in Dark Souls people can leave behind messages to help or warn other players? Picture that, only people can also leave behind actual structures and tools for people to use. I was frequently relieved to find that some kind soul had built a bridge or left a ladder behind in a place where it really helped me out, and I know for a fact my structures helped out others because the game is quite enthusiastic about letting you know when someone uses your stuff. You can reward these helpful players by giving them likes with the touchpad. Unlike real life, likes actually do something here by helping you level up faster and also making it easier for you to discover other players' structures. If a structure requires certain items to build or upgrade, multiple players can also chip in materials to help it along. If a player ends up losing a piece of cargo, it gets left behind for other players to pick up. If it's a supply item then you can use it yourself, but if it's a delivery item you can finish the delivery yourself or stash it in a locker for someone else to grab. Either way, multiple hands helping a delivery reach its destination means more likes for everybody who contributed to the effort. Oh yeah, and players can also donate unneeded items to shared lockers that other players can access, which gives you extra likes for your generosity. While it is possible to play this game offline in the sense that it won't lock you out if you're not connected, trust me when I say that you don't want to do that. This game is very much meant to be played with everyone working together and helping each other out.

 

A lot of people say they couldn't get through this game and I kind of understand it. It doesn't really open up until chapter 3. Until then you're pretty helpless. You have no vehicles, no real self-defense options, and no better way to do all your deliveries than just hoofing it the entire way. You eventually get all these things, but the beginning of the game is just a lot of walking and climbing without much else going on to keep it interesting. Even after you get all these things, if delivering cargo over treacherous terrain and through hostile territory doesn't sound like something you can have fun with then Death Standing probably isn't for you. It's a very well-made game and technically astounding, but they definitely didn't go into this trying to make a big, crowd-pleasing game that would appeal to everyone. You have to be able to appreciate a slow burn to get much out of this.

 

Oh, and the actors give some fantastic performances too. I usually hate when people add big name celebrities as voice actors or mocap actors just to cash in on their name and then the performances they give are underwhelming because they either didn't take it seriously or because video game roles are simply outside of their skill set, but these people really gave it their all. If you're going to insist on having big name actors for your video game, this is how you do it.

Edited November 19, 2019 by Mister Jack

[Mal]

Honestly, I see yours and other people thoughts that I trust for MGS/Kojima games to be solid recommendations. While I am apprehensive about a walking simulator, it's not like I don't have some that I heap praises on (e.g., The Stanley Parable). Also can you really call it a Kojima game if you don't go "WTF, Kojima?" quite a few times?

[toxicitizen]

40 minutes ago, Mal said:

Honestly, I see yours and other people thoughts that I trust for MGS/Kojima games to be solid recommendations. While I am apprehensive about a walking simulator, it's not like I don't have some that I heap praises on (e.g., The Stanley Parable). Also can you really call it a Kojima game if you don't go "WTF, Kojima?" quite a few times?

 

Yeah, after MGSV there is no doubt in my mind that Kojima's real genius is as a game designer. He has a reputation mainly for his weird stories and being a "director" or whatever but his solid game design has always lowkey been the best part about his games, just not the flashiest. And, I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the hell out of his weird stories and I'm glad that Death Stranding sounds like it has a more prominent one than MGSV. But MGSV really opened my eyes in how it was the storytelling equivalent of someone farting in my face and yet that gameplay alone carried the entire game for me.

 

 

And every single time I remember that gameplay I feel the urge to reinstall the game. I get why Death Stranding is divisive but I'm really confident that I'll love it and I can't fucking wait for summer 2020!