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

[Mister Jack]

Alien: Isolation

 

Finally got around to this one thanks to Game Pass and it reminded me a lot of Condemned: Criminal Origins in a good way. The developers utilized some clever and sadistic tricks here to really up the tension. For starters, the alien is completely invincible to every weapon you have, and at best you can temporarily drive it away if you have something to set it on fire. While I imagine some people will gripe at this, it does dispel any notion that you can fight this thing. More than that, however, is that fact that there is no auto-saving except at a few specific story-related moments. 95% of the time, the only saves you get are the ones you make yourself, and saving the game at a station takes about five seconds, during which you are completely vulnerable. The alien actually killed me once while I was in the middle of saving the game. As if that isn't enough, each save station has a cooldown period before you can use it again. It definitely makes you more cautious because you don't want to lose progress by dying, but sometimes the save stations are a little too far apart. I had to redo up to 15 minutes of progress on more than one occasion, sometimes multiple times in a row, and when that happens it gets frustrating and not very fun, but this is a problem that could easily be solved in future games by putting just a few more save stations in the environment. 

 

Props to the alien's AI, too. It's quite relentless and will learn to adapt if you use the same trick too many times to get away from it. I never felt like I could exploit it to make it do what I wanted or move how I wanted it to move like I could with Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. At no point is the xenomorph ever going to stop being the biggest threat in the game, and rightfully so. I also liked the android enemies, which are cheap uncanny valley knock-off versions of the more sophisticated Weyland-Yutani androids. That's a brilliant design and their robotic one-liners as they chase you around the ship are super memorable. 

 

If I have one major complaint it's that the story runs out of steam before it's over. The big climax of the game happens around maybe 3/4 of the way through but then it just keeps going for several levels. The last few missions are mostly just constantly backtracking to flip switches, push buttons, and power up generators while a pissed off xenomorph who never ever leaves stalks you in an enclosed space, which is more tedious and aggravating than anything. Remember, if it catches you at any point you have to push all those buttons and flip all those switches all over again unless you were lucky enough to manage a save in between. I think if they shaved off the last two or three hours of the campaign it would have been much tighter and ultimately more satisfying at the end. It's still a damn good survival horror game though. I'd love to see Sega make more of them, if not another Alien game then at least something else, because they've done it enough times now to prove they know their stuff.

[TheMightyEthan]

I liked that game until I encountered the androids, fighting enemies was just not what I wanted from it.

[Mister Jack]

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

 

I finally wrapped this one up after playing it off and on since it launched back in July. This is actually a compilation of two games with ten cases overall. There was a time once back when this was Japan exclusive when I thought missing out on this game was no great loss since it was totally unrelated to Phoenix, Maya, or any of the other characters I'd come to love in the other games, but I have completely reassessed my feelings toward this entry now. While it's true that Phoenix and co. are completely absent, I grew to adore the new cast. Herlock Sholmes especially is an absolute himbo who steals every scene he's in. I friggin love him. This game also has my new favorite defendant in the entire series. There's just so many goofy, memorable, and not to mention highly animated characters on display here. They also have more presence here than in previous games, meaning when the story calls for it you can see multiple characters on screen at once or see them in the backgrounds during investigations. Herlock is a treat in this regard and you never know where he's going to pop up next. As far as the story goes, these games were clearly planned as a duology and the ten cases all connect to each other in some way. There's no filler cases like Big Top Turnabout here and every episode has some kind of new revelation in service to the greater plot, which is full of twists and turns that eventually lead to one of the most memorable climaxes in the franchise. It's a hell of a ride. On another note, the PC port here is pretty damn solid. I don't know if the character models were remastered since I never played the 3DS version, but they all look quite good and I often forgot that this game was originally on a handheld. If you're an Ace Attorney fan, don't skip this one just because Phoenix isn't in it. Trust me, you won't regret giving it a chance.

[toxicitizen]

On 9/1/2021 at 2:20 AM, 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?

 

It's been a while but I wanted to follow up on this. Turns out it's not really a bug although I'm still not clear if that's really how it's intended to work. But apparently you're supposed to use disk clean-up to free the space back up lmao. Even if this had been communicated clearly (it wasn't), locking down a game's files in a folder the user can't even access sure seems like a good idea if it causes this kind of nonsensical side-effect.

 

So yeah, if it ends up happening to you don't panic, I guess.

[TheMightyEthan]

I thought you weren't supposed to have to use disk cleanup in win 10 because it does all that stuff on its own in the background?

[toxicitizen]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Pikuniku, it was a short and enjoyable "quirky platformer", which the world is hardly short of but I would recommend it as it doesn't outstay its welcome.

[TheMightyEthan]

Halo 4

 

This game was actually much better than I remembered, I think my opinion of Halo 5 tainted (see below). It does have some issues with the gameplay, mainly that the Promethean Knights aren't fun to fight and there are too many of them. They don't have any weak points, and their shields recharge too fast, so there's no real strategy involved, just pouring fire on them, so on anything higher than Normal they're just a pain in the ass. They use them like Elites, or even Jackals, but they're as hard to kill as Hunters. The gunplay itself feels good, but the enemies suck. The music isn't great either, which is a bigger detraction than I would have thought. The story though is actually pretty great (a fairly major retcon notwithstanding), it had me really invested in it and wanting to keep playing, so overall I came away feeling pretty positive about it.

 

4/5

 

Halo 5

 

This game is the opposite of Halo 4 in so many ways. First off, they fixed the problems with the combat. The Knights now have weak points for you to target for extra damage, and I don't think they have shields at all. So that's nice. They also introduced a new Promethean enemy called a Soldier, which is easier to kill and also have weak-points. Soldiers are somewhere between a Jackal and an Elite in terms of threat and resiliency, and they're used accordingly, making up the bulk of Promethean forces. Knights are now used as the heavy enemies they are, with most fights not having any, and only a few when they do show up. The gunplay still feels great too* (the one positive aspect of 4 that they kept). The music is also way better, making it feel much more like a Halo game in that respect.

 

The major thing 4 did well though, the story, is completely shit in this one. Cortana's face-heel turn is completely unearned, with no lead-up whatsoever. I think it could have been done well, if they'd used this game to set it up, had her turn at the end, and then led into a Halo 6 with a conflict more like the one in this game. That's not what they did though, instead they just started this game with "oh, Cortana, that chick who sacrificed herself at the end of 4 to save Chief? she's now a power-hungry megalomaniac who's going to take over the galaxy." It's completely awful, and I honestly didn't care at all about the characters' motivations or what they were doing because it just all felt so forced and, again, unearned.

 

That's not the only thing, it's like they looked at all the things people didn't like about Halo 2 and said "Yeah, let's do that stuff again!" Boss battles that aren't in any other Halo? Check. Spending most of the game playing as a character antagonistic to Chief? Check. What could possibly go wrong?! Oh right, people didn't like that stuff before cause it was bad, and it's still bad here. The boss battles are stupid, and they're made more stupid by the fact that it's the same boss every time, the only change being how many of him there are. And then there's Locke. The whole conflict with "bring Chief in" also feels so forced, and it makes me disconnected from his parts of the game (which are the huge majority, at least 2/3 of the game is you playing as Locke) because I don't want him to succeed. I want to be back to Chief's part of the story. All the times where I did feel some connection to the game, and some interest in seeing it through, was when I was playing as Chief, because even though the conflict feels forced I do actually care about him and Cortana.

 

So yeah, this game deserves all the hate it gets.

 

2/5

 

This exercise has given me some hope for 343 though. Between 4 and 5 there are all the components of a great Halo game, they just need to put them all together. Hopefully they take the right lessons from those games.

 

*It's especially impressive to me that 5 felt good to play considering I was playing via xCloud, since 5 isn't on PC. I could slightly feel the input latency, but it wasn't even as bad as my old TV was. The image quality wasn't great, but it was serviceable. Overall I'm super impressed with the tech.

[toxicitizen]

4 minutes ago, TheMightyEthan said:

*It's especially impressive to me that 5 felt good to play considering I was playing via xCloud, since 5 isn't on PC. I could slightly feel the input latency, but it wasn't even as bad as my old TV was. The image quality wasn't great, but it was serviceable. Overall I'm super impressed with the tech.

 

Kinda how I felt after playing a few games through PSNow a little while back. It does in a pinch when you really wanna play something that isn't on PC but I would never want for it to be my primary way to play games. God of War and Uncharted 4 in particular I'm really eager to replay on PC because the low resolution + heavy compression made it hard to fully get into them. Like, I could tell that they were gorgeous-looking game but I couldn't really see it.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, exactly, it's good enough for a one-off here and there that you don't have the hardware to play, and it's cool that I can jump to my phone and pick up right where I left off, but I wouldn't want it to be my main way of playing.

[Mister Jack]

Twelve Minutes

 

Game Pass again. This is a point and click that takes place entirely within a two room apartment. The main character is trapped in a roughly ten to twelve minute time loop with his wife right before some very bad shit goes down, and you have to figure out how to prevent it from happening as well as how to escape the time loop. The interesting thing here is that puzzle solutions are often timing based. Since you only have, at most, 12 minutes per loop, you have to gather what clues and information you can in each loop so you can put it to use in the next loop. You're always working against the clock and even if you know what to do in a loop, if you do it too early or too late it won't have the desired outcome. Of course, if you get stuck this can result in monotony since you're repeating the same events over and over. If you need to restart a loop right away the game lets you do this by leaving the apartment, but otherwise you need to wait for your opportunity, and if you've been at it a while this can be kind of tedious. A Groundhog Day puzzle game is an interesting concept, though. Unfortunately, the thing that kinda killed this one for me is that the plot is mind-blowingly contrived and dumb. Despite strong performances from a cast with the likes of James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe himself, the twist ending completely obliterated my suspension of disbelief because it just relied on too many ridiculous coincidences. I thought to myself "There is NO WAY in hell this could ever really happen" and as soon as that thought enters your head any story it applies to is going to be dead in the water.  I had an easier time believing in time loops than I did in the ending. Hell, I would have believed magic space pixies were behind everything more than I would have believed the ending. In short, I like the idea behind the game and I like how it's presented and I like the performances but holy SHIT the script really needed another pass.

 

When I think about it, another game that does time loop puzzles and has a much more compelling story, even if it gets out there sometimes, is Ghost Trick. Unfortunately, this game is only available on the DS or iOS platforms, but if you have access to either of those I can't recommend it highly enough.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Mister Jack

[toxicitizen]

53 minutes ago, Mister Jack said:

 I had an easier time believing in time loops than I did in the ending. Hell, I would have believed magic space pixies were behind everything more than I would have believed the ending.

 

At this point I've heard of this game more because of people shitting on its batshit ending than because of its own marketing and it's honestly making me more interested to play it than I was before lol.

[Thursday Next]

4 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

When I think about it, another game that does time loop puzzles and has a much more compelling story, even if it gets out there sometimes, is Ghost Trick. Unfortunately, this game is only available on the DS or iOS platforms, but if you have access to either of those I can't recommend it highly enough.

 

The Zero Escape series also does that Groundhog Day type thing, although the GOAT for that concept has to be Ocarina of Time. I've completed my first loop on DeathLoop. Will have to see how that unfolds.

[TheMightyEthan]

Deathloop

 

This game is really good, even though I think a few of the reviews are overselling it a bit (it's not a 10, but almost nothing is). The metascore is an 88 though, and I think that's about right (or maybe slightly low).

 

It's less roguelite-y than it sounds, and more roguelite-y than the reviews make it sound. Basically it's a roguelite where the environments and enemies and stuff aren't randomized, they're the same every time, except for reactions to things you do (ie you do X in the morning which causes an NPC to do Y in the afternoon). Don't let the time-of-day stuff freak you out though, time only passes when you leave a level, you can take as much time as you want within each level and time will never advance, so there's not a rushed feeling that games sometimes get.

 

I think it suffers a little from the contained nature of the game, playing the same four levels (with time of day variations) over and over. You become intimately familiar with them, which is useful for the kind of game it is, but it also means they become maybe a little overly-familiar, and lose their luster a bit.

 

On the positive side, this is the rare stealth game where if I fuck up my stealth I will actually switch to going loud rather than restarting to try again. I say that's a positive because they made both options feel viable, and if you go loud for one part of a level you're not necessarily prevented from switching back to stealth again once you've cleared out the alerted enemies (though it does depend on how loud you are, a chaingun's sound carries farther than a pistol's).

 

Overall, I thought it was a really good game, but I wouldn't quite put it up there with Dishonored or Prey.

 

4/5

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm upgrading Deathloop to a 5/5. I've continued playing since I beat it to work on the platinum, and somehow it's managed to continue to sink its hooks deeper and deeper into me. I think part of it is that all the obscure stuff you need to do for some of them is really making clear just how intricate the world is, how many moving parts there are that fit together so well. It's pretty amazing.

 

*Edit - I know my review up there says it's not a 10/10, it's a 9/10, and I stand by that. On my scale 5/5 is "this game is fantastic", not the "this game is near perfect" that 10/10 implies.

 

1/5 - I hate it

2/5 - I don't like it

3/5 - meh, it's fine

4/5 - I like it

5/5 - I love it

[danielpholt]

TOEM 

 

It's a short little 'puzzle' game that asks you to trundle around with your little character and take photos of things. Super chill, with a nice soundtrack and all-around relaxing vibes. Didn't take me too long to 'beat' 100% and I found it really helped me wind down in the evening. 

I didn't mind paying £16 for it on Switch but I think it'd be an absolute steal on sale. 

[toxicitizen]

Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster

 

Best one yet! Best story, best soundtrack, best characters, best everything!*

 

*until FFVI

 

I actually played this one at least twice before (once with the original on SNES and once with the 3D DS remake) but this was my first time actually finishing it and it was a loooong time coming because I'm pretty sure the SNES version was one of my first experiences with JRPGs. IIRC I rented Breath of Fire 1 or 2 randomly once as a kid and my mind was blown by this new genre of games I had discovered so I rented FFIV next.

 

I had honestly forgotten just how freaking good this game is! Hell, I had forgotten just how freaking good Final Fantasy is. Or, at least, once was. They sure haven't made one this good in a while... It's one thing to look at FFII and go "Yeah, this is proto-FFIV" but to actually compare the two is kind of insane. Where FFII has character-shaped cardboard cutouts pretending to go through the barest of a plot, FFIV has actual characters with their own internal conflicts and arcs. There's actually character growth in this one and sometimes it even ties into their progression. Rydia only learns the Fire spell after being forced to get over her fear of fire. It's a small thing but it goes such a long way towards making you care about her.

 

My only complaint is that the achievements require you to farm for some really fucking rare drops for some secret summons and the best armor in the game, which was fucking tedious. Even if you know to farm a particular item in a one-time dungeon you can't return to (thank FUCK I did, RPGSite are doing god's work with their missables guides for these games) that allows you to automatically trigger the rarest enemy encounter in any given area, you're still looking at killing the same enemies for a few hours. I don't even want to think about trying to get that pink tail without those items...

 

So yeah, this was great! Bring on FFV!

Edited September 21, 2021 by toxicitizen

[TheFlyingGerbil]

On 9/21/2021 at 10:55 AM, danielpholt said:

TOEM 

 

It's a short little 'puzzle' game that asks you to trundle around with your little character and take photos of things. Super chill, with a nice soundtrack and all-around relaxing vibes. Didn't take me too long to 'beat' 100% and I found it really helped me wind down in the evening. 

I didn't mind paying £16 for it on Switch but I think it'd be an absolute steal on sale. 

 

Not heard of that and it looks right up my street. I think I might struggle with the price tag but I'll definitely keep an eye out for a sale. You might like A Short Hike if you've not already played it. 

[toxicitizen]

Halo 3

 

I played the first couple missions at the beginning of the month, back when I was still waiting for FFIV, and I wasn't really feeling it at the time. Then around the same time Ethan called it "the best shooter campaign ever" or something along those lines and it got me curious so I went back to it after I wrapped up FFIV. And.... yeah. What the fuck?

 

I liked Halo 1 and 2 but they didn't exactly join the ranks of my all-time favorites. They were good and I understand how groundbreaking Halo was at the time but to me a great FPS campaign needs a little something extra. I realize this isn't a fair comparison but they weren't exactly Titanfall 2 (not that Titanfall 2 is among my all-time favorites either but I digress.) Halo 2 in particular frustrated me a little by the end with some difficulty spikes and tedious mission design. Halo 3 is a whole different story, though. There isn't a single mission in that entire game that I didn't thoroughly enjoy. Never a dull or tedious moment or any point where I wished a level would end already. This is a pretty damn solid FPS campaign.

 

There's one moment in the final level. You're trying to get off the Halo before it fires and running through some corridors and as you come around a corner you see the exit... and a warthog. At that moment I had the biggest grin on my face because I knew exactly what we were doing and I knew exactly which track was going to play. This series' soundtrack is so freaking good, all they have to do is put me in literally any vehicle and play some version of this theme

 

 

and I'll immediately go "Fuck yeah!" It's basically like a cheat code.

 

So I guess I'm halfway through my Halo journey. ODST and Reach are next, and then Halo 4. I might look into how xCloud works on PC to play Halo 5 eventually but I don't think I'll get Infinite at launch so I'm in no rush.

[TheMightyEthan]

[danielpholt]

The Artful Escape

 

The game is at its best when it lets you stand still and play music. Unfortunately those moments don't come as often as I would have liked and instead you're left with this Alto's Adventure styled gameplay mechanic which is fine in short doses, but feels a bit sort of.....meh by comparison.

 

Still, it's on Gamepass and for that alone I think its worth a look. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock

 

I already sung this game's praises in the What Are You Playing thread. Now I've finished it, and everything I said there held true through the full thing. It was exactly what I wanted, and I don't know how it could have been done better.

 

5/5

[toxicitizen]

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

 

What better way to put my new monitor through its paces than by playing uh... an NES style throwback sidescroller? Yeah, I don't know. It was pretty good, though!

 

For some reason I bounced off of the original Castlevania every single time I fired up the Anniversary Collection but this one clicked with me instantly. It probably helps that it's not bullshit hard like NES games used to be. The last level has one hell of a difficulty spike, though. The entire game is pretty forgiving and suddenly you're being chased by this swarm of... something that destroys everything and some sections require perfect timing with your jumps otherwise you fall to your death. The final boss also felt insanely hard at first but once I started getting a feel for its pattern (and realized there was a hidden room with the most powerful power-up right before it) it was actually pretty easy.

 

I unlocked Nightmare mode and still have some alternate endings to do, though. The game is less than two hours long so I don't mind doing a few more runs before moving on to something else.

 

Oh and since I mentioned my new monitor. Playing a sidescroller on a curved monitor is weird. Maybe it's the angle I was sitting at from it but whenever there was a transition between two rooms and the camera panned, there was this really weird effect. Normally in a sidescroller a camera pan will register as, well, a camera pan. But here the curve made it feel like it was the background that was sliding in from the side, like it was on a physical layer scrolling behind the screen of the monitor. I don't know if that makes any sense but it's kinda hard to describe.

[Mister Jack]

Yeah that's ultimately why I decided against curved. It seems like the majority of content out there isn't really made with curved in mind, at least from what I've seen. Probably works great for certain titles, though.

[toxicitizen]

I don't think it has anything to do with specific content and whether it's made for a curved screen or not. From what I understand, it's mostly meant to give a clearer view of the screen because of the way the human field of view works.

 

 

The effect I noticed in Curse of the Moon didn't detract from the experience or anything. It just made me go "holy shit what" for a second hahaha. Most of the time you don't really notice the curve, there was just something about that particular effect that made it extremely obvious for like a second or so. It's also worth noting that my monitor has a more aggressive curve than in that picture. Mine is meant to match the curve of the human eye, I think.

Edited October 4, 2021 by toxicitizen