Games You've Beat 2021 - PXoD's Excellent Adventure

[TheMightyEthan]

I understand curved screens for monitors, like yours, where you can make sure you're at the focal point of the curve, what I don't get is for TVs. Sure it's a little better right in the exact focal point, but literally anywhere else is going to have even more visual distortion than a flat one would.

[toxicitizen]

A friend of mine has a curved TV and the curve on it is way milder than on my monitor so I assumed that's something they take into account. I figured maybe a less aggressive curve could account for a farther viewing distance and a wider zone where you get the best view or something. So I googled and one of the first results was an article about why curved TV didn't take off and went away. So you might be on to something there lol.

[danielpholt]

Just finished Echos of the Eye, the recently released DLC for Outer Wilds. 

 

Whilst I don't think it'll have the same effect on me as base-game Outer Wilds (one of my favourite games of all time), it's a worthwhile sledge of content for a game I truly love. As for Echos itself, it's got everything you'd want from DLC to that game.

 

The way these people deliver story without a second of dialogue or (in this case) even any language whatsoever is something else; super impressive what they can do with some nice art and top-tier music.

 

If you've not already played Outer Wilds, I really recommend you give it another look (and don't worry too much about the ship controls, it's a space ship made of wood and sticky tape, it's okay to crash it).

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Seasons After Fall

 

This one's tough, because it's charming as all hell, but the actual game parts range from boring to tedious to aggravating. There's not a whole lot to do, besides just run from A to B and do very very minor puzzle solving, but it's not immersive in the way a walking sim can be, and you end up running back and forth through the same areas multiple times. There's also some very simple platforming, but even that can be irritating because the controls are too clunky to do it well. The game is gorgeous though, and the music is great. They need to take the art team from this game and put them on something better. I don't really know how to rate it, because I feel pretty positive about it, but also wouldn't really feel comfortable recommending it to anyone...

 

3/5... I guess?

[MetalCaveman]

Alan Wake + The Signal DLC + The Writer DLC

 

Spoiler

More games should have tornado boss fights.

 

Holds up pretty damn well all things considered, really makes me wish for a remake instead of a remaster.

 

Main gripe is the combat, specially when fighting multiple enemies, it can get annoying quickly. Died a bunch of times to encounters with enemies that would just pop out from behind me and then BAM! Toast. Dodging can be quite wonky at times too.

 

That said, the story and the rest of the game make up for it, specially that one METAL part, that was awesome, more of that please.

 

According to Steam, the last time I played was sometime in 2013, so that took a while. I remember something happened that made me jump out of my chair, quit the game and then... Never play again, surprisingly, this time around I didn't find it to be that scary, quite on the action side actually.

 

The DLCs were fun, super short, about 1 hour(ish) each, I feel like having played the AWE DLC for Control made my opinion of them better, don't know what my thoughts would be on the story if I had played these first.

[TheMightyEthan]

I thought the story was still great when I replayed it last year, it was only the gameplay I didn't think held up. I'm glad you didn't have that problem.

[danielpholt]

Sayonara Wild Hearts

 

A short little rhythm game with a super cool soundtrack (there's probably a name for the type of music in it, but I don't have it). 

Didn't take overly long (around an hour) to beat and I can see you going back to earn a higher score. 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

The Suicide of Rachel Foster

 

This is another one that's hard to rate. It's a walking sim, which tells you basically all you need to know about the gameplay. I was quite enjoying it up to the very end, but at that point the main character does a thing I thought came completely out of left field and was entirely unearned. Since it was the very end it soured my whole experience.

 

3/5, would have been 4 if not for that thing at the end.

[Mister Jack]

Lost Judgment

 

A cop arrested and convicted for groping a woman on a train announces during his sentencing that the body of his dead son's high school bully has just been discovered mere minutes ago, despite being in prison for the past two months and having no way to know that. When an autopsy reveals that the victim was killed while the father was in prison with no way to contact the outside world, the mystery of who killed him and how a prisoner with no connections could have known about it kicks off the plot of Lost Judgment.

 

This is a sequel that improves on everything the last game did, which is exactly what you would want out of a sequel. The story takes place after the previous game as well as the events of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and both games are referenced frequently so it's best enjoyed if you play them before playing this one. The story kept me guessing all the way through, and I'm usually pretty good at figuring out murder mysteries before the killer is revealed. There are now also two cities to play around in instead of just one: Kamurocho and Yokohama, which will be familiar to anyone who played Like a Dragon. Yagami now has a third fighting style to choose from in addition to the two from the last game which is best used against enemies armed with weapons. Investigations now give you a bunch of detective gadgets to use while looking at potential crime scenes. They added a skateboard so you can get across the city quickly without always needing to find a cab, and you can even collect points while skateboarding to spend later on items. There's a whole new category of side activity where you can work as a club advisor in a high school and bonding with the students by helping them with their clubs or their problems can reward you with new unlockables and missions. And of course you have all the expected side activities like arcades, mahjong, shogi, casino games, drone racing, batting cages, and more. There's a ton of stuff to get lost in outside of the main story.

 

My two biggest gripes with the original game, which I still very much loved, were that tailing missions were tedious and knife or gun wounds lowered your max HP until you went out of your way to get treated by a doctor. Both of those issues are gone now. Tailing missions still exist, but they are drastically reduced in number and there's a new mechanic in them where you can avoid being caught by acting casual if your mark happens to see you. I think I only came across two, maybe three tailing missions in my entire playthrough, which is a relief. The mortal wounds mechanic is gone entirely. In its place is a new combat mechanic where bosses and elite enemies get unblockable ultimate attacks that hurt like hell if they hit you but if you can dodge them at just the right moment you get an opportunity for a counter finisher that does a ton of damage. This is way more fun than having to find a doctor, not to mention super satisfying when you manage to pull it off.

 

I really can't think of much about this game that I didn't like. They clearly listened to feedback for the first game and kept it in mind while making the sequel. They added more, emphasized the good parts, and cut out the bad parts. I feel like if I forced myself to complain about something it would be a nitpick. It's really a shame that this is probably the last game in the series thanks to stupid licensing issues because it was really starting to pick up steam.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Mister Jack

[MetalCaveman]

Alan Wake's American Nightmare

 

A fun, short, action-oriented spin-off, completed it in about 4 hours, less if you count the time spent watching TV in-game.

 

I was a bit worried at first since combat wasn't the best part of the original, but it turns out they did re-balance things a fair bit, Alan no longer has the stamina of a 150 year old asthmatic with lung cancer that just ran a marathon, so you can sprint and dodge more and more often than before.

 

There are a lot more weapons and they're more fun to use, specially the combat shotgun, only downside is, you have to collect manuscript pages to unlock them, though the levels are small enough that this isn't too big of an issue, also they're marked on your mini-map so it's even easier to find them. The best part though, you no longer start from scratch each level, you actually keep your inventory, that was cool.

 

Story was fun, presented as an episode of the Night Springs tv show seen on the original AW, not really meant to be canon, specially after the events of the AWE DLC for Control, but still, a cool what-if kinda thing.

 

It also has some RE4 level of cheese in some scenes.

[TheMightyEthan]

I thought American Nightmare was like what was supposed to be happening 

Spoiler

once Alan was trapped at the bottom of the lake with the... whatever it was.

So like it's canon, but not "real", if that makes any sense.

[MetalCaveman]

Yeah that makes sense. I ended up looking it up and

 

Spoiler

It seems Control made American Nightmare canon, there's a puzzle in the AWE DLC (that I missed apparently) that leads to one of those calls from Alan where he talks about the events of AM (the Old Gods tour, Barry being their manager, the song Balance Slays the Demon):

 

 

So yeah, the ending didn't actually happen, in that Alan did not return to the real world, he's still trapped with the dark presence, but the events mentioned in the radio station, with the Old Gods and Barry did happen. Presumably Mr Scratch was also removed from the real world but was not fully destroyed, given that he kinda shows in AWE.

 

[toxicitizen]

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

 

Finally got around to playing this one. I don't have a ton to say about it, to be honest. It's pretty good; not sure I'd call it great. It's certainly no Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night. Hell, it's no Hollow Knight for that matter. But it's still a pretty fun time although I did find some elements kinda frustrating at times.

 

Enemies that can fly through the scenery and disappear out of reach (and often out of the screen entirely) doesn't exactly make for fun combat. There's also a super weird difficulty spike on one of the early bosses. Maybe I was underleveled or something but since the game was never again that challenging afterwards, that one fight kinda stands out as simply poorly balanced.

 

It's also kinda weird playing this immediately after Curse of the Moon as so many of the characters and bosses are recycled between the two. It's clear RotN is the one where they originated but it kinda takes some of the game's thunder away to reach a boss and go "Oh right, this one."

 

The weird thing is that the games don't complement each other in any way. Curse of the Moon is its own separate timeline and is pretty incompatible with Ritual of the Night story-wise. So it probably would've been better if it had its own cast of characters and enemies.

 

On a more positive note, it's by far the nicest looking 2.5D metroidvania I've played. I usually graphics like that super underwhelming visually but I thought this one looked pretty good. The background doesn't feel bland or empty and the characters/enemies don't feel disconnected from it. It's not graphically impressive or aything but I thought it looked pretty good for what it is.

 

Oh and I expected a Symphony of the NIght-style inverted castle kinda deal but there's actually nothing like that in the game, which was a little disappointing. There's a bad ending if you go fight the final boss as soon as you reach him but it literally ends with a game over screen. So unless you're an idiot who doesn't realize that you still have like 40% of the map unexplored, it's pretty obvious you're meant to keep going. There are a few more areas to explore but that's it. It feels less like an hidden true ending and more like the game has an arbitrary point where it expects you to guess that you need to keep going.

 

I'll play the sequel for sure although I do hope they improve things somewhat. This was a 7/10 at best for me and it could've been an easy 9-10. Oh and it has one of these obnoxious "Obtain/craft literally everything in the game lol" achievement as an extra fuck you. That's every weapon, armor, food, material, etc... Basically wasting an extra 5-10 hours of your time for no good reason if you wanna get all the achievements. Which...

 

 

I will not be playing Curse of the Moon 2 immediately. I've had enough of this series for the time being lmao.

[TheMightyEthan]

Life is Strange: True Colors

 

This is the first game I got through Gamefly, and it was a good choice. The game is really really good. I figured out the twist about 5 seconds before Alex did, which is honestly about the perfect way for that to work out, and that kind of timing is really hard to pull off. I don't love it the way I loved the original, but if I had played this one first it might have had that same kind of feeling. Right before the end I was a little worried, because the big climax scene kind of fell flat for me, to the point that I checked my phone during it, and there's one little aspect to the reveal that I thought was a little too wrapped-up, but everything else was so great, and the epilogue redeemed it, so overall I didn't think it detracted from the game.

 

5/5

[danielpholt]

HALO 4.

 

I moved around (slowly). I shot at things. I occasionally pressed X to let Cortana do something. You know, Halo shit.

 

In fairness to the game, all of my prior experience with the franchise has come in the form of campaign co-op, and so playing solo felt like a pretty tedious affair; that's probably more to do with my specific situation than anything the game was doing. 

 

Onward onto HALO 5 I guess.

 

[Mister Jack]

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this one, although a portion of that is admittedly because I love these characters. That's not to say it's another Marvel's Avengers or anything. It's quite good, even if it doesn't compare to something like, say, the Arkham series. The story and characters are the biggest draw for me personally. The Guardians have a lot of fun banter with each other and as Star Lord you often have to make dialogue and leadership choices that can have an effect on future events. I suspect that the main plot ultimately plays out in similar ways, but saying or doing the right thing can come back to benefit you later on so that's cool. 

 

The gameplay isn't super complex but it's not totally mindless either. Picture something like Mass Effect with you giving commands to squad members to use abilities only instead of a cover shooter it's an action shooter where Star Lord uses his jet boots to zip around and dodge laser fire. You can also command them to use their unique talents to solve environmental puzzles. You never directly control the other Guardians, which will definitely disappoint some people, but I see what they were going for. At the risk of sounding like IGN, they want you to really feel like Star Lord, and as Star Lord it's your job to keep the team together through thick and thin. There are some really nice scenes where Quill has some heartfelt chats with the rest of the crew to grow closer and get a better understanding of them. Getting back to the combat, each Guardian is useful in different ways and finding synergy between their abilities is the best way to get through battles. My favorite feature is when you fill up a meter you can call in all the Guardians for a group huddle and give them an inspirational speech. If you give them a good speech they all get motivated and receive buffs. If you give a bad speech they get disgusted with your lameness and receive no buffs. Either way, using the group huddle changes the battle music to a random song on Quill's tape player and it is a great way to get you amped for the fight.

 

Speaking of music, the soundtrack is great. There are some really solid licensed songs on the soundtrack, and rightfully so. However, what deserves special mention is that this game made up a fictional metal band called Star Lord and recorded an entire album for them. And these are good songs, too! I would play the Star Lord album in my car without hesitation.  Even if you don't play the game, you should at least listen to the album.

 

If I have any real criticism it's that the game is kind of easy. I don't think I ever died in combat on normal mode, so you should play on hard if you want anything resembling a challenge. However, I will note that one really nice feature the game has is custom difficulty settings where you can adjust things like enemy damage, player damage, cooldown times, and plenty of other things that honestly almost seem like cheat codes if you set them a certain way. However, this allows you to customize the game to be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. It's honestly a pretty great feature and while I'm not saying every game should have it, I do hope it shows up more often.

 

All in all I'd give the game a solid A-. The gameplay is serviceable if not spectacular but it's really propped up by the great presentation. Definitely not low-effort junk like Avengers was.

[TheMightyEthan]

Man, that was quick.

[Mister Jack]

I'm stuck at home so I had a lot of free time. It's probably about 12-15 hours though.

[danielpholt]

Marvels Guardians of the Galaxy

 

It won't win any awards for pushing the medium forward or anything; but Guardians of the Galaxy is an pretty flarking enjoyable romp through Marvels Galactic universe. It's far from the most original game ever released, but it's polished to high-hell and the games story is actually kinda alright. 

 

A few technical issues aside towards the end (did anyone else get some pretty horrendous frame-rate issues during the final few battles?) I don't really have any complaints. The game plays well, it runs well (aforementioned issues aside) and it looks fantastic (60FPS is a must). 

 

It's linear as anything, but you know what? That's fine. Sometimes a guy just wants to sit down after a long day at work/parenting, grab the controller and zone out right? No decisions; just walking and talking and shooting bad guys, and Guardians is great at that. 

 

All in all, after the disappointment that was Marvels Avengers, it's nice to see that maybe Square can give us something that's legitimately fun.

 

3/5 (Enjoyable)

 

As an aside, I'm interested to see why Guardians seem's to have avoided the flak that Marvels Avengers got in terms of not having the MCU likenesses. Is it simply that Guardians is a game that people are enjoying, and thus the likeness issue isn't being used as a weapon against the game, or is their more to it; maybe the Guardians characterisation is just that bit stronger, so it becomes less of an issue almost immediately upon starting the game?

 

 

[Mister Jack]

6 hours ago, danielpholt said:

As an aside, I'm interested to see why Guardians seem's to have avoided the flak that Marvels Avengers got in terms of not having the MCU likenesses.

 

If I had to guess it might be that Guardians is clearly doing its own thing and is more comic inspired with its designs whereas Avengers always kinda looked like diet MCU even before they changed the designs for that one.

[toxicitizen]

7 hours ago, danielpholt said:

As an aside, I'm interested to see why Guardians seem's to have avoided the flak that Marvels Avengers got in terms of not having the MCU likenesses.

 

What Jack said but also I think the main thing with Avengers wasn't the lack of MCU likeness so much as the character designs being pretty generic and kinda bad/boring. Guardians didn't have a good reveal but I distinctly remember thinking at the time: "well at least the characters don't look like shit in this one lol".

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, for me the issue with Avengers wasn't that it didn't look like the MCU, it was that it looked too much like the MCU without being the MCU. It was like MCU uncanny valley. Guardians seems to have more of its own personality, even though it's clearly influenced by the MCU Guardians.

[danielpholt]

The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes

 

The third game in the DPA series, and probably the strongest entry so far. The game takes a while to get going, unlike the previous entry Little Hope (which is also fantastic), but when it does finally kick into gear it's nonstop through the end.

 

Probably my 'favourite' new game of 2021 so far. 

[CorgiShinobi]

Last night I finished Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

 

Let me preface this that I love the MCU's Guardians of the Galaxy films with the first one still being my favorite of the MCU. With that said, these Guardians certainly took inspiration, but remain comic faithful in other aspects and are, undoubtedly, all the better for it. As y'all have discerned, Marvel's Avengers felt like Diet MCU; as if we got imposters to fulfill the roles that the movies built up.

 

With Guardians, these are my favorite interpretation of the group. They're a rowdy, hilarious, and chaotic bunch that will save the galaxy even if they're the only ones to do it. They've got their hang-ups and there's friction between members, but the whole time it's engaging. I would only put down the controller out of needing to go to sleep for the next day. The story takes you on these varied missions and environments that you're never quite certain if the end is near or what the group can possibly do next.

 

Really, I could gush about so much in this game. Even the ending is a wild ride and can have minor differences depending on how you made your choices. The only downsides are the sometimes buggy nature of the game and the combat. There aren't any major bugs to worry about, but I've had some that required me to load the last checkpoint. Thankfully there are many autosave checkpoints, so you'll never be that far behind. The combat can be dynamic, but half the time I felt I wasn't doing a lot of damage as Star-Lord where the bulk of damage and stagger effects had to come from my teammates. But then they're on a cooldown and so I go back to whittling health as Star-Lord.

 

The hardest trophy to get in the game is finishing off staggered enemies with a Charged Shot 15 times. Your Charged Shot is both finicky to use and does pitiful damage that you'll easily forget about it. Even when you're actively seeking out the trophy, the situations where you can stagger and then do just enough damage with the Charged Shot are rare. (Not to mention your teammates might finish them off too.)

 

Still, that's a mole hill of a gripe and this is truly a fun single player game. Takes me back to the mid-2000s when we had tons of fun superhero action games. It is linear, but like Dan said, that's perfectly find and sometimes you can go off the beaten trail to find a secret and get yourself a cool new skin for the team.

 

8.5/10

[danielpholt]

22 hours ago, CorgiShinobi said:

Last night I finished Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

 

Let me preface this that I love the MCU's Guardians of the Galaxy films with the first one still being my favorite of the MCU. With that said, these Guardians certainly took inspiration, but remain comic faithful in other aspects and are, undoubtedly, all the better for it. As y'all have discerned, Marvel's Avengers felt like Diet MCU; as if we got imposters to fulfill the roles that the movies built up.

 

With Guardians, these are my favorite interpretation of the group. They're a rowdy, hilarious, and chaotic bunch that will save the galaxy even if they're the only ones to do it. They've got their hang-ups and there's friction between members, but the whole time it's engaging. I would only put down the controller out of needing to go to sleep for the next day. The story takes you on these varied missions and environments that you're never quite certain if the end is near or what the group can possibly do next.

 

Really, I could gush about so much in this game. Even the ending is a wild ride and can have minor differences depending on how you made your choices. The only downsides are the sometimes buggy nature of the game and the combat. There aren't any major bugs to worry about, but I've had some that required me to load the last checkpoint. Thankfully there are many autosave checkpoints, so you'll never be that far behind. The combat can be dynamic, but half the time I felt I wasn't doing a lot of damage as Star-Lord where the bulk of damage and stagger effects had to come from my teammates. But then they're on a cooldown and so I go back to whittling health as Star-Lord.

 

The hardest trophy to get in the game is finishing off staggered enemies with a Charged Shot 15 times. Your Charged Shot is both finicky to use and does pitiful damage that you'll easily forget about it. Even when you're actively seeking out the trophy, the situations where you can stagger and then do just enough damage with the Charged Shot are rare. (Not to mention your teammates might finish them off too.)

 

Still, that's a mole hill of a gripe and this is truly a fun single player game. Takes me back to the mid-2000s when we had tons of fun superhero action games. It is linear, but like Dan said, that's perfectly find and sometimes you can go off the beaten trail to find a secret and get yourself a cool new skin for the team.

 

8.5/10

 

Can confirm. It was the first thing I unlocked and I think I used it 2-3 times throughout the entire game.