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

[Mister Jack]

The Secret of Mana remake is trash. Just stick with the original.

[toxicitizen]

1 hour ago, Mister Jack said:

The Secret of Mana remake is trash. Just stick with the original.

 

In what way? I know reception was mixed but whenever I look into it I can't seem to find any real problem with it, at least one that would bother me enough to not want to touch it. I know the soundtrack is supposed to be worse but I can live with that. I'm not familiar with the original so I probably wouldn't even notice it. And I personally prefer pixel art over bad 3D graphics but, again, I can live with it. Other than that, it sounds like it's a fairly faithful remake.

 

Am I missing something? What makes it trash?

[Mister Jack]

New cutscenes with terrible writing and voice acting and absolutely no lip movement during dialogue, worse soundtrack like you said, moving combat from 2D to 3D makes it much clunkier and harder to both aim your attacks and dodge enemy attacks, menus are worse and more cumbersome to navigate, clipping issues, performance issues, glitches...there's really just no reason to pay money for the remake over emulating the original for free.

[toxicitizen]

Damn. I really wish that Collection of Mana had been a multiplatform release. That and Collection of SaGa.

 

Well, I've got the rom and I've had RetroArch installed on Steam for a few months now. About time I gave it a try, I suppose.

Edited August 25, 2021 by toxicitizen

[Mister Jack]

Psychonauts 2

 

I finally took up Microsoft on that $1 month of Game Pass to play this. Before I get to the game, I just want to say the PC client for Game Pass is a piece of crap. It spent hours getting errors every time I tried to download a game and I eventually had to completely reset the app settings for gaming services and app installers on my brand new desktop for it to work, and MS didn't even suggest that solution on their own tech support. I had to go looking in forums for the answer. It's a Microsoft app on a Microsoft OS. Why do I need to jump through hoops to get it to work? 

 

Anyway, putting that aside, Psychonauts 2 was totally worth the wait. After so many years I'm sure a lot of people will be wondering if it could possibly live up to the hype and I'm here to say that yes, it does. I love the first Psychonauts but this sequel is no doubt a better game than its predecessor. The cartoony graphics look great and remind me of the puppets used by Laika, the platforming is tight, the levels are wildly imaginative and mind bending but never frustrating, the enemy designs are very clever, the writing is more mature while still being very funny, and the themes on display here are really thoughtful and heartfelt. It's just a great game that anyone who enjoyed the first Psychonauts is going to love, not to mention one of the best platformers in years. Double Fine stumbles sometimes with their games but this might be the best one they've ever made. All those years of development were not put to waste. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Moss

 

This is a cute little VR action platformer, and it's actually really good, if a little short. The sense of physicality you get from doing it in VR is really cool. The environments are gorgeous, the lighting is fantastic, and the animations are amazing, which all contributes to it feeling very real in a way most games don't. I'm really looking forward to the sequel. It has also reignited my interest in PSVR2 (aside on that in the PSVR thread).

 

5/5

 

 

[Mister Jack]

Battletoads (2020)

 

I have Game Pass for a month so I figured I might as well try some more games while I have it. Unfortunately, the Battletoads reboot is really kind of a mess. It has no idea what it wants to be. Most of the time it's a brawler, but then oh, now it's a racer, now it's a puzzle platformer, now it's a bullet hell game, now it's a puzzle game. It can't just pick a genre and stick with it. I know the old Battletoads games mixed things up sometimes, but never this much. I honestly wouldn't even mind the constant changes so much if not for the fact that most stages are very long and the new gameplay types wear out their welcome long before they're done. The turbo bike tunnel section lasts for ten minutes! Imagine playing Warioware and each game lasted for ten minutes. It's excruciating. Frankly, the gimmick stage I ended up liking the most was one that was just a bunch of quicktime events of the toads trying to do boring office jobs. It was short, simple, and kind of amusing for the couple of minutes it lasted. The brawler stages are probably the most fun part of the game, but unfortunately even those are pretty flawed. Each toad has different strengths and weaknesses, which sounds cool on paper but Zitz ends up being objectively the best character because he's the fastest toad, meaning he has the best dodge and adds the most hits to the combo counter. The flashy, high damage finisher moves that are a Battletoads staple are rarely worth using because unlike other brawlers, there are no invincibility frames and the finisher animations are just too long to rely on without taking a hit. You're better off just using regular attacks most of the time and that's a drag.

 

I can't say I'm a fan of some of the creative choices made either. I don't like the art style or the updated designs. The Dark Queen in particular has a misshapen mouth and freakish hands that are bigger than her head. The plot of the game also reimagines the toads as a trio of incompetent jackass losers who usually make things worse whenever they try to be heroes. I can see how this could be funny in theory but the unapologetic 90s attitude played completely straight is what I found kind of charming about the other games. Shining a spotlight on it and making them into loser dorks feels like they're explaining the joke and trying too hard to be funny. Honestly, they feel like completely different characters. The new villains are also lame.

 

I hate to be so negative because I can tell they were trying very hard to make something cool, but it just didn't really pan out. The difficulty is more fair than the old games at least. What a lot of people don't want to admit is that the old Battletoads games could be pretty poorly designed at times and they rewarded memorization more than skill or reflexes. That's not an issue here but what you're left with still just isn't that engaging. The brawler sections can be fun, sure, but if you want a brawler you are better off just playing Streets of Rage 4, which is a much better game. I came away from this one feeling pretty disappointed. The clock says it took me only 3 hours total to beat it but it felt like much, much longer.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Mister Jack

[toxicitizen]

The Room 4: Old Sins

 

Man, I love these games. Short and sweet, and while they are on the easy side of puzzle games they have such a fantastic style that I still enjoy the hell out of them. I feel like I waited a while for this one. According to Steam, The Room Three came out in 2018 but I rarely play them at launch so it was probably less than that. This might actually be the closest to launch I play one of them because this one only came out on PC like 6 months ago. I think this is also the first time I play the PC version without the next mobile installment having already come out. I really hope the series isn't over because there's only one more and it's a VR game so I'm not playing that anytime soon. And even if there's another mobile entry coming, the PC release is usually years later because they rebuild the entire thing from scratch so either way it's gonna be a while.

[TheMightyEthan]

Oh shit there's a 4? I've only done the first two but I loved both of them.

[toxicitizen]

IIRC, on mobile it was only The Room: Old Sins but they made it number 4 for the PC release. I think it's supposed to be a prequel? The series' lore is pretty interesting but I played the games so far apart that I really have no idea what the fuck is going on from one game to the next lol.

[TheMightyEthan]

TIL those games have lore.

[toxicitizen]

Well, you're reading notes about events that have already happened. I think lore is the correct term for that? lol

[TheMightyEthan]

You're right, I really meant I learned there's an overarching lore between all of them, rather than just individual unconnected stories you're discovering.

[toxicitizen]

I remember nothing about the first two but 3 and 4 definitely both talk about this null element cosmic horror thingie.

[TheMightyEthan]

Null element definitely sounds familiar, and since I only played the first two it must have been in them as well.

[Mister Jack]

The Ascent

 

This was another Game Pass game. I must admit, Game Pass is a pretty good deal, but by the time my trial month is up I'll probably have beaten all the games on there I am currently interested in playing anyway so I'll most likely cancel it until Elder Scrolls or Starfield comes out. Getting to The Ascent, I've seen some cheeky people saying that this is "Cyberpunk 2077 done right." Well these people don't know what the hell they're talking about. Not that The Ascent isn't good, it is, but Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world FPS RPG while The Ascent is an isometric twin stick shooter. The only thing they have in common is that they're both in the Cyberpunk genre, and even then The Ascent leans harder into the sci-fi because there's aliens and whatnot. It's worth playing, but don't think of it as some kind of Cyberpunk stand-in. 

 

Something very important to emphasize is that this is not a DIablo-esque dungeon crawler with constant loot drops. Enemies will sometimes drop weapons and armor, yes, but the stats on each piece are fixed like in a normal RPG. There is a decent variety of guns and you can upgrade the ones you get at a gunsmith, but every riot shotgun you find is going to be the same so the only thing dupes are good for is selling for cash. This game is a shooter first and an RPG second. That's not to say there's no build variety. Even if the guns are standardized, you can unlock cybernetic combat abilities to use in fights. You get two normal abilities and one ultimate ability, and mixing these up is where the real fun is. It takes a few hours to unlock more than just frag grenades, but once you do the combat becomes a lot more interesting. Each type of gun also comes in ballistic and energy versions, with ballistic working better on organic enemies and energy working better on robot enemies. You can equip two guns at a time so I usually used one ballistic and one energy, though depending on the kind of area you're in you'll probably be swapping them out often, which I consider a good thing. Something unusual for a twin stick shooter is that you're also encouraged to duck and shoot from behind cover when it's available. Sometimes you just gotta Leeroy Jenkins a group of enemies but if you recklessly charge into an armed mob you'll probably die pretty fast.

 

The story is interesting and the voice acting is surprisingly good. Unfortunately, the game ends right when things start picking up. They obviously plan to continue things in a sequel or in DLC but it still kinda sucks when you're getting into the narrative and it suddenly just stops. The game is also quite beautiful for an isometric twin stick shooter and even offers ray tracing. However, I did have some severe frame drops from time to time, usually when entering a new area, and I'm on a 3060 Ti so I'm pretty sure it's not me. Apparently this is a known issue with the PC version that is supposed to get patched at some point. Some people claim to have issues with the online co-op but I can't verify that because I never played online. There's no matchmaking so if you want multiplayer you need to find some friends to invite.

 

If you already have Game Pass I'd recommend giving this one a try. If not, I'd still recommend it, but maybe wait a bit until the next steam sale when it has hopefully gotten a few patches under its belt.

[toxicitizen]

2 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

so I'll most likely cancel it until Elder Scrolls or Starfield comes out.

 

Gamepass on PC? Man, you love living dangerously lol. I don't know if I'd wanna risk it with either of those games considering the shitty Xbox app's tendency to randomly decide to eat save files or hold onto drive space after you uninstall a game. I don't even want to imagine what it would feel like to lose a 300 hours save for no reason whatsoever or to uninstall the game only to realize you now have to format because you no longer have access to the like 250GBs of space games will probably take by the time either of those comes out.

[Mister Jack]

21 minutes ago, toxicitizen said:

hold onto drive space after you uninstall a game.

 

Is that really a thing? God damn. I haven't experienced it personally but if that's true then the app is even worse than I thought. How the hell did Microsoft push out something so shitty and how is it still not fixed?

[toxicitizen]

The House of Da Vinci

 

IIRC I bought this right after beating The Room Three and then forgot about it entirely. I was looking for another similar puzzle game and the Steam algorithm recommended it to me. I figured I should probably go in with low expectations but this game is actually shockingly similar to The Room. You interact with the same kind of Rube Goldberg devices that keep opening up and revealing new puzzle sections. There's even a little eye piece tool that lets you see things that aren't visible to the naked eye. It has a more straightforward mystery vibe and Da Vinci aesthetic though, so it's nowhere near as stylish as The Room. It also turned out to not be quite as good.

 

At first I was pleasantly surprised by how similar it was but after a while I started getting a little frustrated with it. I don't know if the puzzle design is just less intuitive or simply meant to be harder but I kept missing things. I always make it a point to avoid using the hints in The Room but in this I eventually got fed up and used them whenever I got stuck. There was even one time when even with the hints I couldn't figure out what the game wanted from me and ended up brute forcing my way through the puzzle.

 

Overall, I'd call it "good, not great". I'll get the sequel eventually but probably not until I can get it for 5 bucks or so.

 

15 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

 

Is that really a thing? God damn. I haven't experienced it personally but if that's true then the app is even worse than I thought. How the hell did Microsoft push out something so shitty and how is it still not fixed?

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited September 1, 2021 by toxicitizen

[TheMightyEthan]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

 

I really loved this game when the original came out, but this time I just thought it was fine. There was nothing wrong with it, per se, but I was definitely ready for it to be over. I'm not sure what the difference is, other than that it's aged, but I suspect it's actually more to do with outside circumstances. The first time I played it my wife was out of town for a week visiting family and I basically binged it all day every day when I wasn't at work, and also my expectations were low because I'd heard it wasn't great. This time, on the other hand, I was only getting to play a couple hours a day, and I have a big backlog that kept making me feel like I needed to move on. Neither of those things is really the game itself, but that's how it hit me. I don't think either of my impressions can really be separated out to figure out how much is the game and how much is life.

 

As far as the game itself, it's definitely AA, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's old AA, so I think it feels worse in comparison to more modern games. Lots of aspects of the quest design and world feel outdated too, so overall it just doesn't hit the way it once did.

 

3/5

[Mister Jack]

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

 

Game Pass again. I heard all kinds of talk about how this one is a masterpiece and a must play and how it'll change the face of gaming forever and...it's just okay. That's not to say there aren't things to like. The graphics are superb, the story and presentation are compelling, and the sound design especially is top notch. In fact, I'd recommend playing this with headphones on, preferably with 7.1 surround if possible. As a storytelling experience, Hellblade is indeed quite ambitious.

 

As a game, though? It kinda falls on its face a bit. Most of the time you're just walking around and looking at things. The environments are beautiful, sure, and there are puzzles, but the puzzle solutions almost always consist of, again, walking around and looking at things. It gets pretty monotonous. There's no map or markers of any kind either. The only guidance you get are the voices in Senua's head, who are not always helpful as you can probably imagine. If you get turned around you can spend a long time just trying to figure out where you're supposed to go and that's both boring and frustrating. When you actually do fight, combat is as basic as can be. There's only one weapon, not many enemy types, and your moveset is just light, heavy, kick, dodge, and parry for the entire game. It looks neat visually thanks to some cool cinematography, but it's really not that fun to actually play. I ended up turning the combat difficulty to easy by the end because otherwise it's just such a chore to get through. 

 

Would I recommend this? Well, if you go into it with the understanding that it's pretty close to a walking simulator and keep your expectations in check then you might be satisfied, but then again you could probably just watch a playthrough on Youtube and not miss much. I like everything about this game except the gameplay, but that's a pretty damn big caveat.

[TheMightyEthan]

Headphones yes, but not surround sound. If you turn off surround sound and use the game's built-in 3d audio it's on a whole other level. With surround sound the voices are all around you, yes, but with 3d audio they're right in your ears

[Thursday Next]

I really liked this game. The gameplay was solid*, I liked that it was predominantly an exploration / puzzle game, with some arena fights thrown in, rather than another open world adventure game.

 

The story telling (both the delivery, and the content) were what elevated it to a "must-play" for me.

 

 

 

Edit* "in my opinion", like nothing felt broken in terms of combat or movement, controls felt like they did what I wanted them to do. Combat felt more tactical/puzzle based than skill/timing based which I enjoyed. Just wanted to be clear that @Mister Jackis allowed to have their opinion as it sounded a bit like I was just saying "nah, you are wrong."

Edited September 6, 2021 by Thursday Next

[Mister Jack]

You're good, man. I had my issues with the game but I can understand why someone else might love it.

[toxicitizen]

Eliza

 

I was looking for something on the shorter side of things to play while I waited for FFIV and I tried this one on a whim after bouncing off of a few other games I tried. I'm not sure why I slept on it for so long. I mean, I do. I love Zachtronics but a visual novel isn't really what I wanted from them. But, as it turned out, the style of their games is a really good fit for the genre.

 

The low-key art and ambient soundtrack just really suits itself to relaxing and getting into a story. There are some UI elements that come into play that feel super Zachtronicsy and made me think of the histograms you see after you finish a puzzle in their other games. There's even the now obligatory solitaire mini-game and this one is ridiculously hard. Early on it occurred to me that its difficulty was ironically appropriate given the themes of the story and I got to wondering if maybe that was deliberate. I figured I was just overthinking it but in the last chapter someone actually mentions the game and makes a similar analogy lol.

 

I don't know if this is something I'd necessarily recommend to everyone. It's a small story about people and mental health, not exactly mind-blowing stuff. And if you had told me what it was about ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have been super interested. But it ended up really resonating with me, for some reason. It reminded me a lot of VA-11 Hall-A, another game I ended up really loving.

 

There's a few different endings based on which character you choose to join and normally I'd feel compelled to go back and do them all but for once I'm actually satisfied with the ending I got. There's another one I probably would've been happy with but two of the choices simply did not appeal to me at all and I did not care for their associated characters either.

 

So yeah, if Zachtronics ever makes another VN it'll probably be a day one purchase like their puzzle games from now on.

Edited September 8, 2021 by toxicitizen