Games You've Beat 2020

[TheMightyEthan]

Only 51 hours to beat it? That's a lot shorter than I'd been hearing. That makes it a lot more attractive.

[Mal]

Xuan Yuan Sword 7

 

For a studio who doesn't have experience with an action RPG, DOMO Studio has an alright attempt at it with this entry to a long standing series (I'm very unfamiliar with it but it has been around since 1990 and range from turn-based to MMO-like). Lots of room to improve.

 

Combat needs to be diversified to make it less repetitive. As of right now, it's spam them to win unless the boss has some archaic mode where they can't be hurt. Lots of kiting otherwise. Basic enemies are cool but some of the more advanced ones should take some thinking to kill. With that said, there were some attempts to spice up the combat with companion skills and special moves. There's also an execution move you can do but the prompt for it is tiny and you don't get much out of it. Plus it slows the game down.

 

The linear world is fine but level design along with traversal methods got to improve. Things do not stand out in any meaningful way so things will skip your vision. Movement is hindered by action prompts to climb or move through certain obstacles that just stops gameplay. You can't run but you can spam charge which will get you where you want to be faster. Exploration of nooks and crannies aren't typically rewarded. 

 

Story wise, it's like some okay late 80's to 90's wuxia movie. Nothing to write home about. Hell, I feel like there's quite few loose threads but it might come down to not knowing Chinese history too well (like, I know who Wang Mang is but not the details of what he did) and the history of the game series.

 

Animation is a mix of mo-cap and not mo-cap, and oh boy do the not mo-cap stuff stands out. It's like playing Oblivion again but in higher fidelity! 

 

With that all said, I recommend this game to see what Chinese/Taiwanese devs can do. In this case, I would say it's an AA-level dev. The setting is quite pretty and the characters are pretty okay. This game takes about 19 hours to finish so if you can snag it for say ~$10 or less then maybe you should check it out. Besides, it got some of the best roundhouse kicks ever and we got a version of Watson going on:

basically the NPC can teleport if you outpace them or scale something they can't. By not means a deal breaker since it's quite amusing. Like we're fighting demons and monsters so maybe don't teleport in strange places!

[TheMightyEthan]

Detroit: Become Human

 

I really liked this game, definitely the best of David Cage's and Quantic Dream's. The character drama was actually pretty engaging, and the characters were all well-realized and well-performed. It's a little naive in its worldview, but the rest of it is good enough to make up for that. It's good enough that I'm working on the platinum.

 

4/5

[toxicitizen]

Gears of War 4

 

Since I just bought Gears 5, I figured I should at least play this one first. I had been meaning to do so all year but I kept installing it, not playing it, and uninstalling it because it takes like 130GBs. And since Gamepass games can only be installed to your Windows 10 drive, that means it was taking like half the available space on my boot SSD.

 

Anyway, it was pretty fun. I'm not exactly a huge Gears fan,  I had only played the original years ago because it was the only one they ever released on PC. I'm not sure what I expected from this one but that sure was some Gears of War. It honestly almost felt a little dated, but not in a bad way. This is PS360-era cover shooter through and through. If that's what you're in the mood for, I think Gears of War is about as good as it gets.

 

My biggest issue was that I couldn't choose who I wanted to play as. I know if you play co-op the second player can play as Kait but I kinda wish I had been able to choose her in single-player too. This felt like her story more than JD's since she was the one with the most at stake in the story. Playing as Marcus Fenix's son kinda felt like a concession to their dudebro fanbase or something.

 

The story was also kinda weak. Again, I don't know what I expected here, but the pacing seemed off to me. The way it all happens in one go, with each act leading immediately into the next one without leaving any breathing room for any of the events. It made everything feel kinda rushed, especially with the sudden ending and the way some plot threads aren't really resolved. Like it's implying that something big is happening but you're only following this small group of characters on this one little thing they're doing on the periphery of things. Which is fine, I guess, this could just be me having the wrong expectations for what a Gears of War story is lol. The game does make up for it with atmosphere, though. There's some really cool level design and creepy monster stuff in there, and the windflares were a neat little bit of worldbuilding.

 

So yeah, not bad/10. Looking forward to playing Gears 5 in the near future.

[Mister Jack]

Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony

 

What the fuck did I just play? No, seriously. This franchise has officially gone off the rails. I could talk about the gameplay tweaks, some of which were sorely needed, but never mind that shit. The real elephant in the room is the story, which is the most important part of a visual novel. That makes it impossible to talk about without spoilers so the non-spoiler stuff I'll say is that for the most part I liked the characters in this entry. With some exceptions I found them overall to be more compelling than a lot of the previous entries' characters. I found fewer of them to be annoying wastes of time, although I did not care for the new Monokub characters. They really serve no purpose other than to be forced comic relief and Monokuma was already doing that on his own. Alright, so with that aside, I just gotta talk about the ending...

 

Spoiler

That ending was M.Night Shyamalan-tier. Throwing the first two games under the bus by establishing them as fictional video games in-universe so you could make this game turn out to be a reality show based on those games? That's really what we're going with? And the way they do it is so judgmental and hostile that I have to wonder if the series creator hates his fans and wanted to spite them by ending the series in the most bitter way you could possibly imagine. It gets WAY too meta for its own good and spends several hours basically saying "you suck for enjoying this." Were people harassing him or sending him death threats or something? I just can't imagine what would inspire a twist like this other than a deep-seated loathing for your own audience. This is the kind of ending that not only kills a franchise but also salts the earth so nothing can ever grow on it again.

 

So yeah, even with the improvements to the gameplay and the cast of compelling characters I would still call this entry the weakest of the three. Even if I put aside my distaste for the ending, there are some real pacing problems. The prologue and the ending drag on for way, way too long and some of the new minigames during trials also last too long and mess up your momentum right when you're on a roll with your deductions. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a bad game. The trials are still fun for the most part and there are cool new mechanics like telling lies to advance your case. I'm just flabberghasted that all of this turned out to be in service to a story that was so fucking stupid.

[Thursday Next]

"not only kills a franchise but also salts the earth so nothing can ever grow on it again." - Yeah. Didn't like the end. The story up to that point was the usual hot Dangan-nonsense that I enjoy. I found all the same things annoying that you did I think.

 

Oh well, there's always the Zero Escape series to keep your spirits up.

[TheMightyEthan]

14 hours ago, FLD said:

And since Gamepass games can only be installed to your Windows 10 drive, that means it was taking like half the available space on my boot SSD.

 

This isn't true, you can install Gamepass games to any drive, I always put them on my secondary games-only SSD so I don't fill up my boot drive. There should be a way to choose which drive you're installing it to at the installation stage, but if there's not you can also go into your Windows settings/Apps, find them in the list, click the "move" button and move it to whatever drive you want.

[toxicitizen]

8 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

 

This isn't true, you can install Gamepass games to any drive, I always put them on my secondary games-only SSD so I don't fill up my boot drive. There should be a way to choose which drive you're installing it to at the installation stage, but if there's not you can also go into your Windows settings/Apps, find them in the list, click the "move" button and move it to whatever drive you want.

 

Oh wow, you're right. That must have changed in one of the recent updates (I think the Xbox app and GP itself are both technically out of beta now?) because that definitely did NOT work the last time I tried lol. It would throw a warning that I could only install games to the same drive where Win10 apps get installed. I'm guessing it had something to do with them using the Microsoft Store download pipeline for GP.

 

I could have changed the install drive for Win10 apps in general but I didn't wanna fuck with that and I wasn't sure what effect it would have on already installed apps. Plus, I didn't really want to install that stuff on my Steam SSD.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I wanna say it was like in the spring that Microsoft pushed a Windows update that lets you have apps on different drives, because that method works for any app, not just games.

[TheMightyEthan]

Ether One

 

I actually platinumed this game, because that was easy to do, but I really didn't like it all that much. I liked the concept, but goddamn the puzzle design was obtuse. Like point-and-click adventure levels of obtuse. Every time I got stuck and finally looked up an answer, my reaction was always "I would literally never have figured that out."

 

2/5

[Thursday Next]

Spider-Man Mile Morales

 

Really enjoyed this. Just need to mop up the last few trophies.

[TCP]

10 hours ago, Thursday Next said:

Spider-Man Mile Morales

 

Really enjoyed this. Just need to mop up the last few trophies.

 

How long did it take you??

[TheMightyEthan]

@The Cowboy JRPGing Poet It took me about 14 hours, but that's with doing everything that you can on 1 playthrough.

[Thursday Next]

I'd have to check, but Ethan's estimate feels about right. I'm playing through again for NG+ trophy on Very Easy, hopefully shouldn't take long (I reckon 3-5hrs).

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, the NG+ mode to get that trophy took me 3 hours 15 minutes on very easy. That's with only doing the bare minimum to finish the story, and enough side stuff to buy the last suit.

[Hot Heart]

I beat God of War (2018). It was really good and definitely worth playing, but I don't think I enjoy the combat system enough to want to try the 'endgame' content.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I tried one of the Valkyries and was like "nooooope."

[Thursday Next]

Got the Plat on Spider-Man Mile Morales. Definitely 3ish hours if you play on very easy and do main quest only.

[TheMightyEthan]

Immortals Fenyx Rising

 

This game was so good. It obviously has its roots in the recent Assassin's Creed games, particularly the combat, but it doesn't feel like an Assassin's Creed game, it feels like its own thing. It was really nice playing a AAA game with a lighthearted tone that wasn't from Nintendo (even though BotW was obviously another big influence).

 

It's honestly like BotW and AC had a baby that somehow wasn't a deformed monstrosity. The exploration has a real sense of discovery, the towers only revealing the actual terrain, not ask the activities in it, you have to find those yourself. A lot of them can be marked on the map by looking at them through a telescope type view, but you have to look at them directly, and not every activity shows up that way. Even when I felt like I had pretty thoroughly scouted a region I would still stumble across puzzles and things just traveling through it.

 

The world also managed to have that huge, empty feeling that BotW had, without ever feeling like there wasn't enough to do. There are far fewer quests than an AC game, and I think it benefits tremendously from that, there's a ton of stuff to do but the map doesn't feel cluttered.

 

I beat the game but I still have stuff left to do, and I'm definitely in the mood to keep doing it. I can't wait for the Chinese mythology expansion.

 

5/5

[TheMightyEthan]

Concrete Genie

 

This game is just lovely. You play as a kid with a magic paintbrush, and you use it to restore light and beauty to this rundown industrial area where you used to live by painting magical monsters that help you with light puzzles, as well as various scenes to clear away the darkness. It's thematically a lot like Flower, even though the gameplay isn't at all the same. It's just so nice.

 

5/5

[MetalCaveman]

Spider-Man Remastered

 

It was really fun, then it got a bit annoying, then went back to fun. I do feel like there's a bit too much stuff, specially the last part

 

Spoiler

When they throw everything and everyone at you, Sinister Six, Sable, prisoners that escaped, demon gang, etc and so forth!

 

Would have been better IMO, if they just focused on Li/Mr Negative and left Doc and his team for DLC/sequel, or just balance the two a bit more.

 

 

The DLCs were pretty cool too, though I didn't bother to 100% them, couldn't be bothered by then, I have 100% on base game, 93% on first DLC and less than 30% in the other too.  

 

It was also pretty brutal, maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I don't think any other Spider-Man game has been this dark in certain parts.

 

Spoiler

The bomb thing when you play as Miles and Demons are executing the survivors, the DLC when Hammerhead kills those cops. The cop that had the Spidey watch that his kid had given him as a birthday present. 

 

Speaking of dark, the second half of the story and the end hit hard, due to all the stuff going on.

 

Spoiler

A virus being released, the city being put into lockdown to prevent the spread, May getting sick and Peter choosing to create a cure for everyone instead of saving just her, dude. 

 

 

 

Senran Kagura Peach Ball

 

Like Reflexions, a funny, silly spin-off that has no bearing on the main story and shouldn't be taken seriously.  

 

A really fun pinball game, there's a table that has a bunch of minigames that pop up if you complete certain tasks, like getting a certain amount of points, gathering items that appear, or hitting a target a bunch of times. There's also a ton of missions (use certain items, activate special abilities, hit a target, etc) to complete if you're into that. Beyond that, each of the girls has their own story, but they all boil down to the same, Haruka has been up to no good and creates a potion that turns people into animals, the SK version of turning people into animals, so now you, the pinball wizard is the only one that can bring them back.  

 

Each story chapter has it's own special objectives, usually just hit a certain amount of points, activate certain items, stuff like that. Completing them unlocks accessories, table backgrounds, music and other balls you can use.

 

It also has the best credits sequence in any game ever, but I'll leave that up to you if you want to look it up.  

 

Apparently Takaki is now at Cygames, so I guess that means we can confirm that SK and Kandagawa Jet Girls are toast.  At least the memories will remain.  

 

 

[MetalCaveman]

DOOM 64

 

Probably the last game I'll finish this year, it's fun, but it also has way too many puzzles and puzzle-like stuff, on other games I wouldn't mind it, but playing DOOM and being stuck trying to figure out what switch does what and where is weird. It's not that they're complicated, just that compared to DOOM and DOOM2 there's a lot of them or at least it feels that way.  I also did a lot of that thing where you find the door before you have the right key, and then when you get the key you can't find the door, so that was fun.  

[Pojodin]

I am way up this year for how many games I beat. 53 is a lot for me, but with all of my plans for the year canceled and it being the only thing I could do besides work with reduced workouts for several months, it's not a total shocker.

 

1.      Dead Cells

2.      The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)

3.      Prey

4.      Goat Simulator

5.      Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection

6.      Onimusha: Warlords

7.      Dreams

8.      Darksiders Genesis

9.      Code Vein

10.   Nioh 2

11.   Resident Evil 3 Remake

12.   Final Fantasy VII Remake

13.   Baba is You

14.   Streets of Rage 4

15.   Persona 5 Royal

16.   Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling

17.   A Plague Tale: Innocence

18.   Life Is Strange 2

19.   Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut

20.   Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition

21.   Ratchet & Clank (PS4 2016)

22.   Dungeon Hunter: Alliance

23.   Erica

24.   Castle Crashers (Insane Mode and ranked matches)

25.   Ghost of Tsushima

26.   Flow

27.   Paper Mario: The Origami King

28.   Rise of the Tomb Raider

29.   Lost Sphear

30.   Dishonored® Definitive Edition

31.   Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

32.   Dishonored 2

33.   Little Nightmares

34.   Blasphemous

35.   Vampyr

36.   Resident Evil Code: Veronica X

37.   Streets of Kamurocho

38.   Dead Rising

39.   Hades

40.   Demon’s Souls (PS5)

41.   Astro's Playroom

42.   Bugsnax

43.   Mortal Shell

44.   Sackboy: A Big Adventure

45.   Shady Part of Me

46.   BioShock

47.   BioShock 2

48.   Spirit of the North

49. Return of the Obra Dinn

50.   Undertale

51.   Gris

52.   Pyre

53.   What the Golf

Edited December 31, 2020 by Pojodin

[TheMightyEthan]

Holy buckets that's a long list.

 

I have one more level left in Star Wars Squadrons so my list isn't final yet.

[TheMightyEthan]

Star Wars: Squadrons

 

Fun game, don't have a lot else to say. I'm not really much of a multiplayer person, which I know is what the game is primarily about, but I enjoyed the campaign.

 

4/5