Games You've Beat MMXIX

[Mal]

5 hours ago, FLD said:

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.

It shat in my face and I gave up despite having the best core gameplay. I was so wanting a more cohesive package like Ground Zeroes. I'm still so... dejected.

[Mister Jack]

28 minutes ago, Mal said:

It shat in my face and I gave up despite having the best core gameplay. I was so wanting a more cohesive package like Ground Zeroes. I'm still so... dejected.

Fuck Konami, man. 

[Mr. GOH!]

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

 

Didn't 100% it, but got close. Really enjoyed it as a Souls-lite with Uncharted and latter-day Tomb Raider tendencies.  I also enjoyed the narrative and the voice performances. 

 

It performed reasonably well. I had no crashes or game- breaking bugs. It's an Unreal engine game (no Frostbite!!!), so there's texture pop-in at times. It's usually good, but I experienced a couple of really bad environment texture pop-ups and one utter failure to load any environment te tectures in a particular random area.

 

But the game looks good and is very very Star Wars in mostly very good ways. I get the sense there are lots of references to lore created in the Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons.

 

It's been a great week for Star Wars with this and the Mandalorian releasing. 

 

[MetalCaveman]

I still think that GR Wildlands with TPP gameplay would have been fucking awesome.  

 

The more I see and hear about Death Stranding the less I want to play it, it's just not my cup of tea. I think it's cool that it exists and that some people have liked it quite a bit, I just don't see myself playing it. I do like how pretty it looks, and the creatures look cool too. Also the special gas tanks that came out for Days Gone were pretty sweet.  

[toxicitizen]

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

 

Better late than never, I guess. Borrowed a dualshock 4 from a friend so I could play it on PS Now and man, I missed this series. I feel like new Tomb Raider offers a close enough approximation of the gameplay but the characters in Uncharted have such a unique charm to them. I think it may have replaced Uncharted 2 as the best one for me. At least the set pieces certainly topped it.

 

The gunplay was much worse than I remembered, though. I'm sure this is largely due to me not having played a shooter with a controller in ages (what am I, a savage?!) but there's also the bullet sponge enemies that made me rage a bit in the last few chapters. I don't know if I ever argued with you over this @TheMightyEthan or just disagreed silently but holy fuck, I totally get it now. A guy should not be able to shrug off like 3 bursts of automatic gunfire to the upper chest area. At one point I tried punching a dude and the game informed me that I could not do that because he was wearing a helmet. Sure. Whatever. Another time I shot a dude literally right in the face but his magic helmet also made him impervious to that too. Somehow.

 

Thank fuck like 80% of the encounters can be fully stealthed in this one because I think having to shoot my way through the entire game would've soured the experience quite a bit. I remember Uncharted 2 had like this one section in a Tibetan ruin where you started out in hiding and it was clear you were supposed to just roll with it when you got spotted because I stubbornly tried to stealth the entire section and it took me forever to figure out a strategy that actually worked. So I'm really glad they made stealth a viable tactic most of the time in this one because it was way more enjoyable than actually trying to play it as a shooter.

 

Other than that, I really enjoyed it. The story was pretty fun and it was a really satisfying send off for the characters. I probably don't need to spoiler this since it's been years but just in case

I always loved the supernatural twists the games usually pulled in their final act, so I was anticipating one here and was a little disappointed when they wasn't any. The mystery of what went down on Libertalia was pretty compelling, though, and it's probably better not to have that twist than to have a shitty one just for the hell of it. Looking at you, Uncharted 3. Best shooter of the generation, my ass!

 

Also, Playstation Now works surprisingly well. I was expecting latency/input delay to be bad but if there was any I never noticed it. The real issue for me was compression, which made it really hard to appreciate the visuals at times. But it's definitely better than not playing the game at all so I can't really complain. God of War next!

[TheMightyEthan]

14 hours ago, FLD said:

The gunplay was much worse than I remembered, though. I'm sure this is largely due to me not having played a shooter with a controller in ages (what am I, a savage?!) but there's also the bullet sponge enemies that made me rage a bit in the last few chapters. I don't know if I ever argued with you over this @TheMightyEthan or just disagreed silently but holy fuck, I totally get it now. A guy should not be able to shrug off like 3 bursts of automatic gunfire to the upper chest area. At one point I tried punching a dude and the game informed me that I could not do that because he was wearing a helmet. Sure. Whatever. Another time I shot a dude literally right in the face but his magic helmet also made him impervious to that too. Somehow.

 

This is funny to me because imo Uncharted 4 is the least guilty of this out of the whole series. 

[TheMightyEthan]

The Outer Worlds

 

This game definitely felt like a spiritual successor to New Vegas, and I really enjoyed it. As I've noticed with lots of this style of RPG though, the end felt rather anticlimactic. Because it's less directed than other games, they don't tend to end with the set-pieces. In the entire last mission I didn't have to even fight anyone because I was able to pass every skill check. On one hand, that's really cool that you can do that, but on the other it left me feeling like the narrative tension just kind of petered out. I think if games are going to do that they need to figure out a way to make the final verbal confrontation feel as tense as it would if it were combat, and I have no idea how that might be accomplished.

 

*Edit - As a side note, I think I'm going to keep Xbox Games Pass for a while. It's got a great selection for $5/month.

[deanb]

The Outer Worlds

 

Finished this on the weekend. I'd say similar issue around the ending being a bit flat (did fight, but like the ultimate last fight was TTD then a single bullet. Before that I'd had to fight RAM which was a painfully difficult fight compared to what had come before. Mainly in being a bullet sponge). I liked the general world and especially many of the characters but did feel it was a tad linear. You don't have much reason to pop back to anywhere (and nothing really changes; in Edgewater every just stood around for what'd be months really). Inventory was an absolute nightmare (mainly in only being able to sort your own inventory, but not for boxes or companions so hard to find what's a good upgrade or not),. Probably could do with significantly less consumables. All the branding and such meant that you had 20 food stuffs that did the same thing and they didn't sort by what they did. Fast travel, especially between planets was a bit laborious given you needed to get to Unreliable, then go into the nav console, then pick the planet, land, then pick where you wanted to fast travel too. Maybe have me do that the first time I visit each planet (what with "Navkeys") but then just have the map screen have Local | Region | Halycon so you can zip around a little bit quicker.

 

I did enjoy the game, but some faults struck me as things that should have picked up early on. I'd be interested in future games, there's clearly mention of other colonies around, be cool to have them play about with different societies and such.

 

I regret not encouraging the lass to check out the retirement centre.

 

I'm also similar to Ethan, the selection on Game Pass on PC is quite nifty so might keep it around.

[Mister Jack]

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

 

This is (finally) what people have been asking for from EA: a single player story-driven Star Wars game with a big budget and a lot of cool Star Wars action. You'll probably hear criticism that this game rips off Uncharted and Dark Souls and...yeah, it totally does. Climbing, wall running, hanging from ledges, that's all there along with unlocking shortcuts, losing your XP when you die, and a much higher difficulty than you'd expect from a Star Wars game although I still wouldn't put it in the same league as an actual Souls game. The game borrows a lot of mechanics almost to the point of plagiarism, but that never really bothered me. If I like Uncharted and Dark Souls and another game gives me more of what I like without making it feel poorly implemented then I don't see the problem. Why would I complain about getting more of something I enjoy?

 

The graphics look quite nice, but that's hardly even worth mentioning for an EA game. Of course it's going to look nice. That's obviously what they care about the most. What I wasn't expecting was plot and characters I could actually get invested in. This is a pretty good story by Star Wars standards, so I have to give Respawn credit for that. I grew very fond of BD-1, the little droid who rides around on your back. At first all he really does is scan the environment, but after you find a few upgrades he becomes a huge help not only in navigation but also in battle. He's loaded with personality, which is impressive for a character who communicates with beeps and boops. Honestly, I think I like him more than BB-8 from the movies.

 

The gameplay is...well, Uncharted and Dark Souls. Have you played those games? Then you have a pretty good idea what to expect. Combat isn't exactly like Dark Souls, of course. You have force powers and some cool lightsaber tricks to get you through skirmishes, but this isn't a game where you can mow down dozens of stormtroopers without breaking a sweat. Aside from the cannon fodder troopers who shoot easily deflected blaster shots at you, the rest of the Empire's soldiers put up a decent fight and if you get surrounded by two or three of them you can find yourself dead in seconds if your reflexes aren't on point. Even a single elite trooper can feel more like a miniboss than a mook if you just try to hack away at it so you'd better learn to parry and utilize your force powers properly to make things easier on yourself. I like it like that, though. I much prefer nail-biting duels where timing is everything over mindless button mashing a la Dynasty Warriors.

 

So am I saying I would recommend this game? Yes, but with a caveat. It's a bit on the short side. You get a small handful of planets to explore, although each one is pretty huge and new abilities will open up new areas on subsequent visits. Even with that in mind, however, I wager most people will probably finish it in about 12 to 15 hours. That's not insultingly brief, but I do hesitate to say it's worth a full sixty dollars when you can just rent it like I did and beat it in three or four days. There's not a whole lot of replay value that I can discern unless you want to try harder difficulties or find all the unlockable customization items, which are really just different paint jobs for your ship, BD-1, or the poncho you wear. Once you finish it once that will probably be enough for most people, which is fine but is it 60 dollars fine? I dunno. I personally would recommend waiting for a sale, but it's definitely worth playing one way or another.

 

I should also mention that sometimes the game struggled a little on the technical front. On a few occasions there was an audio bug that messed up the lip syncing, sometimes the framerate dropped for a couple of seconds, and sometimes the seamless world wasn't quite so seamless and the whole game froze up for several seconds while it was loading the next area. There were also two occasions where I fell through the world, necessitating a reload. These things were infrequent, mind you. We're not dealing with Bethesda here and by no means am I saying this game shipped unfinished, but I do feel I should mention the glitches. To be fair, it looks like Respawn has been patching this game quite a bit recently so these things might not even be a problem for much longer.

 

Even with my quibbles I have to congratulate Respawn for finally giving us a satisfying single player Star Wars game. In fact, EA should just let these guys handle Star Wars from now on and tell DICE to take a hike.

Edited November 27, 2019 by Mister Jack

[Mister Jack]

Days Gone

 

It's fine. Yeah. It's alright. I enjoyed my time with this game, but I still have to address the elephant in the room and admit that it doesn't have an original bone in its body. It's an open world zombie game and just from that phrase you probably know exactly what you'll be getting here. You got your enemy camps that have to be cleared out to unlock fast travel points. You got your stealth sections with tall grass. You got your cover shooting, your crafting, your bounty hunting missions, your fetch quests, your skill trees, your survival vision, and your wild game hunting. About the only gameplay cliches that are (thankfully) absent are escort missions and climbing radio towers since you can't actually jump.

 

Sounds pretty awful, right? Well, not really. Yes, it's totally unoriginal but everything that's here works well enough. If I had to sum it up, I'd say it's like if Sony made an Ubisoft game. It's got a bunch of the same crap that they do, but said stuff still works a little better than you'd usually see from Ubi. You don't get completely overwhelmed with shit to do as if Jackson Pollock splattered icons all over the map. There are collectibles and side content, sure, but the distractions are kept to a much more reasonable degree. The stealth works okay. At the very least I never had any moments where I was yelling "How did that guy see me?!" The shooting is adequate, although I had to fiddle with the settings for a while to get it just right. I will also say that I like that they let you use the dualshock's gyro to make fine adjustments to your aiming. This isn't the first game to do that, but I think it's the best use of the DS4's motion controls so I always appreciate it when it's available. Also, this is a minor detail but one thing that really helps reduce the tedium is that when there's a bunch of crafting materials lying together in the same place you only have to hit the button once and Deacon will pick up everything that's in the immediate area. Like I said, this has all been done before but it's done slightly better here than what I've seen from the likes of most Ubi games. It was fun enough for me to keep playing until the end, at least. 

 

Weirdly enough, I think the thing I enjoyed the most was upgrading and customizing my bike since the motorcycle is such a huge part of the game. It's the only vehicle you get so you need to take good care of it. Driving recklessly will render it inoperable until you either repair it with your precious scrap metal or you pay a mechanic to fix it, which you don't want to do too often because camp credits are not always easy to earn and you want to be spending them on new guns or bike upgrades. You also have to keep it filled up with gas, which is one of my biggest gripes about the game. You can upgrade your gas tank to get more miles out of it, but until you're near the end of the game you'll be running out of gas probably every fifteen to twenty minutes. This is absolutely ridiculous and I never understand why games like this feel the need to enforce realism by giving you limited gas but then make it run out unrealistically fast. You can't even fast travel unless you have sufficient gas, and until you have the best gas tank available you'll never have enough fuel to travel from one side of the map to the other so you'll probably fast travel to a checkpoint that's hopefully not crawling with enemies, find a fuel can, fill up your tank, and then fast travel to your actual destination. It's a pain, but you have to keep on top of it because believe me, you do NOT want to walk in this game. Not only will it take forever to get anywhere but it will also make you an easy target for freakers.

 

Ah yes, "freakers." Hey, game developers? Can we stop making up cutesy names like we're being clever and just call them zombies? Or you can call them infected if you want to insist they're not actually undead. Anyway, stupid name aside, this is the one aspect where the game kinda stands apart. You might remember E3 trailers showing Deacon being chased by literally hundreds of freaks and it was no exaggeration because this can and will happen and it's downright intense. This isn't the first game to have huge zombie hordes, sure. Dead Rising did the same thing, but the thing about Dead Rising was that unless you got close to a zombie, they mostly shuffled around oblivious to your presence. Here? If one freak in a horde notices you then brother you better believe that they're all gonna notice you and they're gonna make a beeline straight for you like their asses are on fire. These guys are extremely aggressive and you have absolutely no hope of taking them head on when they're in a large group so you have to be smart about it. Set traps. Use terrain and barricades to slow them down. Run through tight spaces so they have to cram together and make themselves vulnerable to explosives. These moments are where the game is at its best and it's the one thing I can say you won't really find anywhere else. The freaks all kinda look the same, unfortunately, but I'm going to assume it was a necessary trade-off to get groups this large to work in the first place so I'll give it a pass. The freaks also have really good hearing and prolonged gun battles with other humans run the risk of drawing hordes to your location, especially at night, so you'll probably get into the habit of relying on stealth whenever you can or at least carrying a silencer around with you as much as possible. On the plus side, you can also manipulate the freaks into taking out enemy camps for you, which is always pretty satisfying whenever you're lucky enough to pull it off.

 

The story is serviceable. It's not exceptional, but it wasn't like Far Cry or Ghost Recon where I spent the whole time thinking "I don't care what happens to these people." I cared at least a little. Deacon is an okay protagonist. He's definitely not going to be the next icon like Kratos or Nathan Drake, but at least he isn't a cardboard cutout. He has a defined personality and a clear character arc. He and Boozer (his fellow biker and best friend) act like a couple of assholes for a while, but they do go through development and by the end they both become much more sympathetic. Of course, that never stops Deacon from taking sadistic glee in slaughtering entire camps of marauders, but what can you do?

 

Oh yeah, there were some technical problems here. Load times are long. Texture pop-in and frame drops were also an issue. I discovered that restarting for each session rather than putting the PS4 into rest mode with the game running helped to alleviate this, but it still shouldn't be happening in the first place. I also experienced one hard freeze that required a total reboot of the PS4. I was trying to send a screenshot when it happened so maybe it was a fluke, but it's worth mentioning. At least I can say I didn't run into many gameplay glitches. Either way, it's a bit rough around the edges on a base PS4. I don't know if playing on a Pro fixes these issues.

 

This is going to make me sound like a company fanboy, but I think if this game had been an Xbox exclusive it would have been better received at launch. It's not a bad game. Like I said, it's unoriginal as hell but you can still have fun doing things you've already done before if they're done well enough and Days Gone is done well enough, certainly well enough for the twenty bucks I paid for it. However, it's a PS4 exclusive which means people will inevitably stack it up against the likes of games like God of War, Uncharted 4, and Spider-Man, which are far more impressive titles. If you like open world games and see this on sale though, I think you could reasonably enjoy it.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Mister Jack

[Mister Jack]

Mega Man 11

 

Finally got a chance to play this and it's pretty good! Capcom's redemption arc is going great. There's not a whole lot to say about it, though. It's Mega Man, you know how Mega Man works. The new double gear system lets you power up super attacks or slow down time, which is cool, but 90% of the time you'll be using the speed gear over the power gear because it's just much more useful. If you slow down time and then unload your mega buster as fast as you can next to an enemy it's usually just as good if not better than powering up your normal shots.

 

Anyway, the graphics are charming and a nice evolution for the franchise. I was getting tired of the 8-bit retro look and I had been wanting to see something new and modern so I'm pleased with what they came up with. I found the game surprisingly hard, too. I don't know if I'm just rusty or if they went out of this way to make this game more difficult but I had to use way more energy tanks than I usually do in the other games. Maybe on repeat playthroughs I'll get used to it. That's kinda how these games work, I suppose. If I have one criticism it's that it's a bit light on content. There's a few challenge modes, a time attack mode, and a boss rush, but that's about it. Considering the asking price for this game they could at least give you another playable character like several of the other games did. I was hoping to unlock a Roll Mode when I beat it but that never happened. I got this game for free though so I'm not going to complain too much. Oh, and the music wasn't very memorable in my opinion, but your mileage may vary. Still, if you like Mega Man then I'm sure you'll like this one just fine.

Edited December 9, 2019 by Mister Jack

[Mister Jack]

The Outer Worlds

 

I think a lot of people here have already beaten this so there's not a lot for me to add so I'll sum it up by saying it's Fallout without the bullshit. I never really ran into many glitches, the gameplay was generally better, and I appreciated having a variety of small and diverse planets to explore as opposed to one huge, barren wasteland. If there's one thing that I think Fallout did better, however, it's the writing. Most of the characters aren't really that interesting and the general plot of the game isn't really anything to write home about either. It kinda feels like you're just meandering about until the last few hours. The companions aren't much better. I didn't hate them but they did little to stand out and many of them decide to join up with you just cuz. The entire party roster combined doesn't add up to the likes of one Nick Valentine or even Dogmeat. And while I realize this was a stylistic choice, I was a little disappointed that the robots in the game are so primitive that you can't really have any meaningful conversations with them like you can in Fallout. They're basically about as advanced as you'd expect the robots that will eventually take everyone's jobs to be, which I get is the entire point, but I miss my robot characters! In fact, I miss non-human characters in general. I know that's not what Outer Worlds is about but I've grown to expect some racial diversity from these big, open-world RPGs and I'm not talking about skin color. The game is also a little on the short side for an RPG, but it's highly replayable so I can forgive that. I've already restarted the game with a character who's a complete idiot with the intention to just fuck up the galaxy as badly as I possibly can through my idiocy so that should be fun. Oh yeah, there were plot threads that never went anywhere too, so I expect DLC expansions to be forthcoming.

[toxicitizen]

Dad of Boy God of War

 

Finally finished it last night and uh, this is one of those games that really makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. It's good, very good even. It does a lot of things really well. It looks absolutely fantastic, the world design is great, Kratos has actually grown as a character, there's plenty to love here. But GOTY? Fuck no, it fails way too hard and fundamentally as an action game to even be included in the conversation. This is a game that's way too obsessed with looking Cinematic™, to the detriment of gameplay. And I feel confident that this was a deliberate choice because of the whole one-cut thing. It's a neat presentation trick, I guess? But it really adds nothing of value to the game and you probably wouldn't even notice it unless you knew about it beforehand. The over-the-shoulder camera also looks much cooler than the zoomed out camera in previous games and this is where the game kinda fell apart for me.

 

Having a camera that's a little zoomed out in a third-person melee action game is fairly common sense. When fighting large groups of enemies at once, situational awareness is key and you need to see what you're up against so you can react and do basic crowd control. If that much is obvious to me then there's no doubt in my mind that the developers at Sony Santa Monica knew this as well. Which makes it all the more baffling that they decided to just zoom that camera right the fuck up to Kratos' back for an over-the-shoulder view.

 

And there's definitely a way to make that camera work. Godhand did it years ago and God of War is fine like 80% of the time. It's super fun when against a group of canon fodder enemies or one on one against a big boss. But when you're up against a group of higher level enemies it just turns to fucking shit in a hurry and at times it made me genuinely hate the game. If you're going to so severely inhibit the player's situational awareness, then you need to design your enemies to behave in a way that's compatible with this. For example, Bayonetta's enemies are less aggressive and don't shoot projectiles when they're off-camera because being hit by something you couldn't see coming and had no chance to dodge isn't very fun.

 

In God of War, enemies just don't give a fuck and will surround the shit out of you. Sometimes I'd get stun-locked by enemies standing right behind me that I couldn't see. Other times my attacks with the blades would get interrupted because some asshole with a shield decided to crawl up my ass. And then there's those fucking dark elves that will dodge your attacks by flying straight up and out of the screen completely because who needs to see what's happening? Also, they have an attack that blinds you because fuck you. That Alfheim section made me seriously question whether or not I wanted to keep playing the game and every time those enemies showed up again afterwards made me roll my eyes and groan.

 

I did all the side-quests I ran into but when I realized the last tier of weapon upgrades were locked behind those combat trials gauntlets, I just said fuck it and went to finish the game because at that point I felt like the game's idea of challenge was not to throw interesting curve balls but just to throw obnoxious shit at you. In a way, playing this on Playstation Now was a blessing in disguise because if I had paid full price for this I probably would've felt compelled to do everything and go for the platinum. But now I'm perfectly happy to peace out without having done any of the end game combat challenges or having to hunt down all collectibles.

 

I did enjoy the story a lot, though. The relationship between Kratos and Atreus was handled really well and the game did a good job of making me curious about this new world. This take on Norse mythology is pretty fucking metal and I honestly like it even more than the Greek setting of the previous games. This version of Odin and Thor sound like complete fucking psychopaths and contrasting this incredibly violent and dark take with the shiny and clean MCU version is kind of hilarious. It was a little disappointing that they ended up not playing a part in the story at all but at some point it became kind of obvious that the game was only dropping that backstory to build them up for a potential sequel.

 

I was gonna do Bloodborne next but I don't think there's enough time until my PS Now month expires, so I think maybe I'll wait a little bit. I kinda feel like playing some games with lower production values for now, anyway. Between this and Uncharted 4, I think I've had my fill of CiNeMaTiC gAmEpLaY for a little while...

[TCP]

Pokemon Sword Edition

Quite simply one of the finest games of this generation. A true genre defining moment for JPRGS.

 

.....Is what I would like to be saying. This game is a 3DS game with a boring world plastered in the middle. It's frustrating. Sun and Moon pushed the series forward in a lot of ways though this game seems to have ignored all of those advancements. The gym battles are weak. Dynamexing is weak. The characters are WEAK. You spend most of the game thinking Hop is the worst character ever and then right at the end two characters show up that are somehow worse. I HATE IT. That said I do love Pokemon. 7/10.

[toxicitizen]

So you're saying it's not the GOTY? I think this might actually be the first time this year.

[TCP]

Everyone knows the Game of the Year is Assassin's Creed 3 on the Switch.

[Mister Jack]

Had the chance to finish up two games I'd left sitting for a while recently.

 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

 

It's been a while since I played Rise of the Tomb Raider so maybe my memory is not entirely accurate but this felt pretty much exactly the same. If there were changes made to the formula for this one, they were so small that I didn't even notice. She can swim underwater now, I guess? Yaaaaay. I don't mean to sound like I didn't enjoy this game because I did. It's a well-made game and all, but I can kind of see why this one flopped when it does so little to stand out from the one that came before it. If you liked the last one I'm sure you'll like this one just fine, but that's all I can really say about it. It's just fine. Pick it up on sale or something.

 

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

 

Now we're talking. I "beat" this game in the sense that I slayed the final boss monster and saw the ending cutscene and credits, so I'd say that counts. The truth is, however, that there's still a lot to do. As popular and well-received as the vanilla game was, one of the criticisms most people can agree with was that there was no real endgame other than farming decorations from elder dragons, which was admittedly kind of true. Of course, it took 100+ hours to beat the vanilla game in the first place so even with no endgame I still got more than my money's worth, but these live service games are meant to be played for hundreds or even thousands of hours so I can see why people would be underwhelmed. Capcom did what they could for a while by occasionally adding new monsters, events, and even a siege, but for a long time there was no real endgame area to take advantage of all your fancy gear. Well, now there is one. Beating the final boss---who is waaaaay harder than the final boss in the vanilla game, by the way--opens up an entirely new area that is specifically meant for endgame gear. Not only is this area huge and populated by monsters that didn't appear in the main story, but it's also constantly growing and changing based on what and where you hunt. It's designed to be played for the long-term, and while I have only hunted a couple of monsters in it so far I can tell that it will keep me occupied for a good while, especially when Capcom is already adding new monsters to this area through free updates.

 

Putting aside the endgame, there are a ton of quality of life improvements to Iceborne, some of which I didn't even realize I wanted. The clutch claw is such a valuable tool to have that it would be hard to go back to playing the game without it now. The new hub, Seliana, condenses all the important NPCs like the chef, blacksmith, and resource center so that they're much closer together, and yet Seliana still feels no smaller than the old hub, Astera. I didn't exactly take a ruler to the game world so maybe it is technically smaller, but it sure didn't feel that way. If anything it feels bigger, especially in the gathering hub area where players can congregate between missions. In Astera the hub was a small area the size of a ship deck that was pretty much an afterthought. You could show off your gear or arm wrestle with other players but that was more or less it. In Seliana you can still do those things, but now you can also play around in hot springs, footbaths, and saunas. It's silly but it's fun.

 

Speaking of bigger, the vanilla game had personal quarters you could decorate with things like paintings and furniture. You could also populate them with small pets you caught out in the wild. This was cool, but you couldn't show it off to other players. It was just for you. In Iceborne, however, not only is your room now much, much bigger but you can finally invite other players to see it! This adds a whole new layer of incentive to keep playing the game because certain missions will now help you unlock new things to decorate your room. Oh sure, getting a new bookshelf or statue won't help you whatsoever when it comes to actually doing hunts but I WANT IT! I just want to feel like I'm accomplishing something while I play, and even without the new monsters Capcom is already adding I would be motivated to keep playing just to unlock new room decorations, which are being updated quite frequently. Capcom really went out of their way to give people reasons to keep playing this game long after the credits roll and I couldn't be more happy about it. This is some of the best value you could ever get out of a forty dollar expansion pack and I already named it as my runner-up for Game of the Year 2019.

 

Oh, and you can also pet your Palico now. VERY important feature.

 

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Switch)

 

I'm super late to the party, but I'm glad I joined. I think I'm finally becoming a person who likes JRPGs. I don't have a lot to elaborate on, it was just an all-around pleasant experience.

[toxicitizen]

1 hour ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Switch)

 

I'm super late to the party, but I'm glad I joined. I think I'm finally becoming a person who likes JRPGs. I don't have a lot to elaborate on, it was just an all-around pleasant experience.

 

Well, I guess the only way for you to go is up then, because I feel like every time I see people mention Ni no Kuni it's to complain about how mediocre it is lol.

 

It's good to hear you enjoyed it, though, because now that it's on PC I do intend to try it out for myself at some point.

[MetalCaveman]

Pokemon Sword

 

If this game had 96% less Hop and 3000% more Marnie, Nessa and Bea it'd have been my GOTY.  

[Pojodin]

1.       Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise

2.       Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: World of Light

3.       Darksiders: Warmastered Edition

4.       Gris

5.       Resident Evil 2 (PS4 REmake) and Ghost Survivor DLC

6.       Kingdom Hearts III

7.       Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition

8.       Spiderman (PS4)

9.       Guacamelee! 2

10.   Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

11.   Okami HD

12.   The Evil Within (Akumu Mode)

13.   The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince

14.   Dragon Sinker

15.   Yoshi's Crafted World

16.   Katamari Damacy Reroll

17.   Gravity Rush

18.   Gravity Rush 2

19.   Foul Play

20.   Tales of Symphonia

21.   Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

22.   Darksiders III

23.   Soma

24.   The Sinking City

25.   Sea of Solitude

26.   The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

27.   The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

28.   Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

29.   Trials of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 3)

30.   Celeste

31.   Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest I

32.   Dragon Warrior II/Dragon Quest II

33.   Dragon Warrior III/Dragon Quest III

34.   Control

35.   Death Stranding

36.   Concrete Genie

37.   Untitled Goose Game

38.   Astral Chain

39.   Man of Medan

[Pojodin]

I should finish my co-op playthrough of Man of Medan today to get the platinum trophy in that. That will also officially nix my backlog and leave me with Dead Cells as my current and only game, which was my goal for the year.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

That is pretty impressive to have a clear backlog, well done. The only way I clear mine is selling consoles.

[deanb]

Donut Country

 

I got it on Switch with some of the pennies off my sister. Thankfully it was on sale because I started it to wind up to sleep and beat it before I was off to bed. All told I'd reckon it was barely over an hour. Kinda cute writing but the game didn't really amount to much and there's some puzzle elements but super minor. Could have done with maybe some more head scratching puzzles and a more katamari-esque scaling up.

So yeah, kinda disappointed on that one.

[TheMightyEthan]

@Pojodin Jesus, that's an impressive list. And a clear backlog is amazing. I seem to bottom out at 3, I've gotten it that low repeatedly, but never less.