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

[toxicitizen]

Blasphemous

 

Holy fuck, why did I sleep on this one for so long? This game is incredible! It's a good thing I played Bloodstained first because it would not have compared favorably to this.

 

I can't really think of a single 2D souls-like that I actually loved until now. The only two I can think of off the top of my head are Death's Gambit and Salt and Sanctuary and I bounced off of both of them. I want to get back to them someday though. IIRC I only got distracted from Salt and Sanctuary, and while I found Death's Gambit rough and amateurish, it recently got a massive update+DLC so it might be worth giving another shot. Anyway, my point is Blasphemous is the first one to actually blow me away.

 

What makes it really great is that, while it's clearly inspired by the Souls games, it doesn't just imitate them. It has its own identity in basically every aspect. I also found the whole bible horror angle to be way creepier than anything in the Souls franchise, including Bloodborne.

 

I kinda want to jump right into NG+ and finish getting all the achievements but I think I'll hold off until next month when the final update/free DLC drops and adds what they're calling the true ending. Not that the game I just played felt like it lacked an ending but I'll take whatever they're willing to add!

[MetalCaveman]

Battletech

 

Unless you're a hardcore fan and need to own/play/read anything and everything Battletech, I'd suggest skipping it.

 

Enemy turns take forever, you can only deploy one lance of four mechs, while enemies will often have at least two lances plus a bunch of vehicles and/or base defence turrets, meaning you move one unit, wait an eternity while they move theirs, you move your second unit.... so on and so forth, takes even longer when you're given support units, which you can't control.   I'd recommend, if you must play this game, to have a mobile game or something else to keep you occupied while you wait for your turn.

 

Camera angles are pretty terrible during enemy turns, too many times I was just staring at some rocks while the sound of explosions, artillery and laser weapons played in the background.

 

Some story missions force you to bring story characters instead of members of your mercenary outfit, in those missions not only do you need to keep these characters alive, but they'll also have the crappiest mechs ever, when they do have better mechs, they don't have any of the skills that would make them effective, so it's a matter of trying to keep them as far away from danger as possible, effectively leaving you one mech short.

 

A story mission in particular was really disappointing

Spoiler

You get a lance of full-blown Star League era mechs! With their Star League weapons and stuff!! ... And they hit like a wet noodle, if they manage to hit anything at all, at the end of it all you only get one of those mechs, with a gauss rifle that hits like a nerf dart...

 

Story was OK, being able to decide whether you're in it for the money, or for some greater cause was cool, the events that pop up here and there were fun, specially as you get more ship upgrades which opens more options like letting pilots fight it out in the training room as opposed to sending them to the brig for insubordination, stuff like that was neat.

 

Time between financial reports felt too short, 30 days in XCOM is fine as it's 30 days of doing stuff, completing missions, shooting down UFOs, etc, however, in Battletech 30 days can go by in an instant, as travelling to certain destinations can take more than 20 days, meaning you'll really have to hunt for the highest paying, and most dangerous, contracts if you want to stay afloat, or just stay in a system with low-paying contracts, taking as many as you can.

 

The best part were the mechs, there's plenty to choose from, and plenty of weapons to equip, with + and ++ variations that get special bonuses like extra damage, more stability damage, stuff like that, customising mechs with different parts and different paint schemes was the best part, shame about everything else lol.

 

A way to make this more fun, if you don't mind fiddling around with some files, is to edit your starting lance, replacing the busted old mechs you get, with some of the unique mechs in the game, that's a fun twist. That and edit some of the hero mechs and their unique weapons, make them feel more like a proper mech.  

[TheMightyEthan]

Guardians of the Galaxy

 

That game was actually pretty great. It doesn't have the polish of big first party games, but it's well put together, a lot of fun, and keeps things nicely varied. It's basically Uncharted in space, and I actually think it's a better game, even though the presentation isn't as slick. It's fun throughout, which is all you can really ask for.

 

4/5

[MetalCaveman]

Bright Memory Infinite

 

OG Bright Memory was longer than the full release lol.

 

About 2 hours, on the hardest difficulty available at the start (there's another unlockable difficulty called Hell). This feels like someone took one of those highlight reels or tech demos they use to show what an engine is capable of and made it into an actual game. There's a stealth section, a vehicle section, basic platforming, everything they could think of is here.

 

Action is cool, boss fights are entertaining, the last one being pure style, in the vein of DMC, though it can also be a bit chaotic and hard to keep track of. Guns feel OK, shotgun lacks some punch in the audio department but everything else is OK, secondary fire was cool, though aside from the assault rifle everything else is just grenades of different types.

 

Enemy variety was better in the original too IMO, you had monsters, flying creatures, soldiers, ancient soldiers, now there's just two types of enemies, sci-fi soldiers and ancient soldiers, with some variations (heavy, sniper, shield, etc) and one level that has you fighting a horde of boars lol.

 

Story is... There? Kinda? It makes no sense and is just there for the characters to have some kind of reason for being where they are (kinda), it's also ridiculous as hell, almost makes RE4 look like a masterpiece of English literature lol.

 

This was hilarious:

 

Spoiler

 

Said in the most monotone voice possible, given the circumstances lol

 

Best thing I can say about this game is that if looks good, really really good, effects, particles, everything, crank the settings up and turn on ray-tracing and it looks freaking amazing, no complaints there lol.

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Forza Horizon 5

 

This game is good, although I didn't fall in love with it like the last two. I did like the setting better than 4, and the actual racing is as good as ever, but I felt like the easy they changed up the progression kind of made it lose a sense of cadence or something. Instead of showcase events unlocking at set intervals, there are points that you get that you can use to unlock them, but they're mixed in a pool with the ultimate races from all the disciplines, and some other stuff, and you pick which one to do next. Something about that made it feel less ridiculous and awesome than previous entries. At the end I just kinda felt like it petered out.

 

4/5

[Mister Jack]

Far Cry 6

 

It's fine. I mean, what can I really say? Everyone knows by now if they like Far Cry or not. You drive, you fly, you shoot, you clear outposts, it's more of what you are familiar with, just bigger and with more content. It can also be a lot of fun if you have a buddy to play co-op with because sometimes due to the random nature of the open world shit will suddenly go bananas without any warning. I once tried to bribe a soldier only for a wolf to suddenly charge in from the side and maul her to death right before a pair of out of control trucks barreled over the both of them and fucking exploded. It's jank as hell but it's fun jank.

 

If I have to find something to talk about with this game in particular I suppose it's the villain and the presentation. I love Giancarlo Esposito. He's a fantastic actor, but the fact is that Anton Castillo is not as memorable as Vaas or Pagan Min and I think this is for two reasons. Firstly, as the dictator of an entire country he has very little direct interaction with the protagonist. They come face to face in maybe three scenes total that I can recall. As a military dictator, Anton also has a hardass no-nonsense personality which is pretty typical for dictator characters and doesn't really have the same kind of evil charisma that you see in Vaas or Pagan. That's not to say Anton is without merit. He has some pretty good monologues here and there, but he's more of a mouthpiece meant to push the story's themes about imperialism and colonialism than he is a fleshed-out character in his own right.

 

The other sticking point for me, and your mileage may vary on this, is that the cutscenes have gone from a first-person camera to prerendered scenes in third-person where you see Dani interact with other characters from an outside perspective. I assume they did this because they wanted Dani to have more of a personality than previous Far Cry player characters, which he certainly does, but I don't know if it's enough of a personality to make losing the first person perspective worth it. I think if the confrontations with Castillo had been delivered in first person they might have left more of an impact. That's what I think worked with previous games. You, the player, are forced to face down psychotic despots. When you watch these kinds of scenes as a passive observer rather than an active participant I feel like they lose something. I can only speak for myself, though. I'm sure there are people out there who prefer the third-person cutscenes.

[Thursday Next]

Death Stranding

 

Finished the story. It's suitably Kojima levels of nuttiness and will take me a while to unpack all the meaning. I'll probably not go back to it for a while though. Feel like I'm "done" with it.

 

On to the next.

[TheMightyEthan]

Death Stranding is Game of the Year, every year.

[danielpholt]

Boomerang X 

 

I can totally understand why people say this game is best experienced on a PC. The Switch does a good enough job, but I did have some pretty bad hand ache after I'd finished most of the latter levels. That being said, I think this game ends up in my top 5. It feels super tight and is satisfying off the bat. Looks.....I dunno, great (I think it nails what it's going for) to be honest with you, especially one the Switch's smaller screen.

 

 

[Mister Jack]

Deathloop

 

It's alright. Figuring out everyone's daily routine over multiple time loops so you can learn how to arrange the deaths of your targets is a pretty neat idea and the guns and powers are fun to play with, but there were a few things about this game that I had a hard time overlooking. For starters, the story leaves a lot unexplained. I don't know if they're planning DLC to fill in the gaps or something but I was left with several unanswered questions. But if we ignore the story and focus purely on the gameplay, the fact is that in order to win this game you have to kill all your targets in one loop and there's only one right way to do that. Most of the game is spent researching how to get everyone where you need them to be so they can all be killed in one day, but don't expect the freedom of a Metal Gear or a Hitman game. While you can kill targets individually to take their gear and powers during any loop and there are multiple ways to accomplish that, when you're ready to get them all in one fell swoop it's extremely scripted. It's still fun, but a little bit disappointing. 

 

My other complaint ties to the sometimes unforgiving nature of the time loop. You get two respawns before the day resets most of the time, which is perfectly fair, but sometimes there are objectives in the game where if you fuck up even once the entire loop is shot and you have no choice but to start over from the beginning of the day. It's not like you can just pause the game and restart the loop from the menu either. You have to either kill yourself until you run out of lives or go all the way back to your home base and move time forward until it loops back to where you were. There are two targets in particular who I found more frustrating than fun to hunt because there was so little room for error. In fact, one of them will ruin your progress for the whole loop if you're so much as detected while in their area, an area that's already crawling with guards. I legit hated this part of the game and felt immense relief when it was over. 

 

I'd still say it's worth playing but maybe get it on sale. I wouldn't quite put it up there with the Dishonored games, but I will say that Colt was a much more likable character compared to Corvo. 

Edited December 7, 2021 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

It's not all that scripted. Sure you have to kill them at a specific time of day on a specific map, but there's always multiple ways to actually do it.

 

All your complaints are valid though, even if they didn't bother me personally for whatever reason.

[Thursday Next]

I also really enjoyed Deathloop, feel like Arkane perfected the formula. While I get the frustration of failing a loop, I remember going for a no-kills run in Dishonoured 2 I reached the end of a really long level only to find that a guard had at some point slid off a roof while unconscious and fallen to his death, I had the choice of restarting the entire level which was a few hours of gameplay or just playing through to the end. At least with Deathloop the loops are pretty short and it doesn't matter how hard you fuck up a loop it's all forgiven at the end of the day, so I don't mind it as much as I find the whole package more forgiving than Dishonoured.

 

I agree it would have been fun if you could have multiple routes to a kill 'em all finale but I guess that is a significant amount of extra work. I wouldn't be surprised if multiple end-states had been in scope at one point, but they had to scale back to make a launchable product. I do feel that once I had seen the end credits, I was kinda done with the game anyway so multiple endings were not something I personally needed.

 

What in the story were you left unsure about? I feel like a lot was covered in the found documents etc. and that it took a more From Software style of story telling being there to dig up if you wanted, while only the basics were fed to you in cutscenes etc.

[Mister Jack]

Spoiler

What exactly caused the anomaly and what the hell was going on in the outside world, mostly. Also what it means for this game to be taking place in the Dishonored universe and what happened between the two.

 

I read all the documents I could find but obviously you can never be sure without consulting a list if you've found everything, which I did not want to do.

[Thursday Next]

Ahhh, got you. Yeah, I'm not fussed about the expanded lore stuff personally, but I get that it would be nice to have some better ties between Dishonoured and Deathloop. Even if it was in the form of some external resource like a comic or whatever.

[TheMightyEthan]

*Deleted my dumb question because for some reason the spoiler tags didn't show up the first time I came in here.

[Mister Jack]

Metroid Dread

 

Finished with just under 6 hours on the clock. Yeah, it's kind of a short game, but what's there is pretty damn solid. The levels are well designed, the power-ups are fun, the boss fights are the most intense in the series, the counter mechanic is cool, and for once the story is actually pretty good when usually I don't really care at all about Metroid lore. Other than that, if you've played Super Metroid I don't have a whole lot of good things to say here that you don't already know. My least favorite part of the game, as is the case with many Nintendo games, was the unique gimmick, which in this case is the EMMI robots that chase you through the levels. Pursuit enemies add some fun tension in 3D games, but in a 2D game like this one they became more of an annoyance than anything. If you so much as touch one it's a one-hit kill and since it's a 2D plane it becomes that much more of a hassle to evade them. They're faster than you even when you haven't been detected and while you do technically have a last chance to escape from their grab the timing on that is so deliberately precise that I only pulled it off successfully maybe five or six times in the what I'm sure is over a hundred times they killed me. Thankfully, the only penalty for being killed by one is that you respawn outside the room where you were killed. If it sent you all the way back to the save point I probably wouldn't have even finished the game. I think the gimmick would have worked better if getting caught simply did a huge chunk of damage rather than killing you in one hit regardless of how much life you have.

[toxicitizen]

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

 

After taking a break from the game midway through the expansion, the Endwalker launch finally motivated me to go back and finish it. I hadn't stopped because I wasn't enjoying it, far from it, it's just that I had been playing FFXIV for like 2 months straight at that point and this is the kind of game that takes basically all of your time and I wanted to play other games. I was only going to take a short break but that ended up being like 3 months. Woops. Once I got back into it, though, I couldn't stop until I was done. This game has a way of sucking you in and consuming all your time.

 

Looking back through the thread, I don't think I ever made a post for A Realm Reborn, so I guess I'll cover that as well. The ARR part of the story is pretty uneven but it has its moments and, considering the circumstances under which it was made, it's honestly way better of a campaign than it has any right to be. And then there's the 2.x updates, a series of roughly 80 level 50 quests you have to get through to reach Heavensward, which... ooof.

 

Even after they updated it to trim the fat and remove some filler (it used to be over 100 quests), it's still a slog to get through. Here's the thing, though. About halfway through the 2.x quests, the story starts getting really good and the climax in the 2.5 update that leads directly into 3.0/Heavensward is honestly one of the best story moments I've experienced in a game in a looooong time. Whether or not it's worth to slog through 100 hours of quests that vary in quality from "boring filler" all the way to "pretty damn good" just to get to Heavensward will depend on the player but I'm really glad I went through with it because holy shit, Heavensward!

 

This is classic Final Fantasy through and through. People aren't exaggerating when they say it's the best single-player Final fantasy story there's been in like two decades. I love FFX, FFXII, and hell, even FFXIII! But none of them come close to Heavensward. It's just peak Final Fantasy. You've got dragons, dragoons, an evil pope and you fight a God at the end. What more could you possibly want? And apparently Shadowbringers is supposed to be even better so there's no way I'm stopping here!

 

I'm also really glad I've been playing the Pixel Remasters in parallel to this because Yoshi-P's love of classic FF is pretty apparent throughout. There are so many references to FFI-III that would've gone completely over my head had I not played them. It ends up making FFXIV feel like a love letter to classic FF and it kinda rules.

 

I'm honestly getting really excited for Final Fantasy XVI, because if the quality here is indicative of what we'll get then it could be the best single-player FF in quite a while. And this isn't something I ever thought I would say after the absolute mess that was FFXV.

Edited December 12, 2021 by toxicitizen

[TheMightyEthan]

Halo Infinite

 

This campaign has some issues that I could go into (the boss fights are terrible, all the main story missions feel samey, no big army-clashing set-piece battles, only one biome, etc etc), but the core is so so good none of that really matters. It's just so damn much fun to play, and moment-to-moment it feels like the Bungie games. I'm actually wanting to dive back in to the open world to do all the FOBs and stuff, and I never do that with open world games. This is a great game despite its flaws, and I very much look forward to what 343 can do to improve upon it.

 

4/5

 

*Edit - I'm going to try a letter grade system, since I feel like that makes more intuitive sense to me than numbers. Halo Infinite gets an A-.

[Mister Jack]

I've only been playing the multiplayer but I think this might be the best the gunplay has ever been. The classic weapons just feel more satisfying to shoot somehow.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I've been thinking about my rating more, and it's still a 4/5 because of those problems I mentioned, but it's a 4/5 with a because it just feels so good to play.

[TheMightyEthan]

Kena: Bridge of Spirits

 

This game is really good. Shockingly good, considering it's the first game this studio has ever made, though you can definitely see their movie roots in the visuals. The story is engaging and moving, even if it's a little cheesy. Think charming kids movie. The game itself is fun too. It's a little repetitive in the overall structure (they applied the Rule of 3 like it was a law of nature), but the areas and specific tasks you're doing are varied, as the different abilities you get along the way. My only real complaint is that it's too hard. I started on normal difficulty and by the end bumped it down to story, though that was a little too easy. I wouldn't have minded the difficulty so much, but some of the checkpointing is just bad, making you redo stuff before getting back to the fight where you died, so it adds an extra layer of friction on top.

 

All in all though I'd highly recommend it.

 

Grade: A

[danielpholt]

The Gunk

 

A few technical issues aside, I really enjoyed my time with The Gunk. It looks pretty, it has a nice charm to it and it's got an enjoyable enough core mechanic (sucky suck suck) that the 4-5 hours it took to complete breezed by.

 

Won't win any awards, but yeah, not a bad little game this.

[deanb]

Watch_Dogs Legion

 

Got this on sale and I can see why it hit that. I actually quite liked the first and second Watch_dogs (more so with the latter) but this one I think I can appreciate the legion idea, but it just wasn't hugely fun. There was very little variety to the people - there was only like one or two missions where you'd somewhat need a specific type of Operative, but with the gadgets they all ended up much of a muchness. It also meant since any mission could be done with any operative the dialogue was written as bland and generic as hell. 

 

One thing that really grated for me was the amount of gun play in this game about hackers. It's like "cool you snuck into this building, got passed everyone, ran your spider through the mazes, deactivated turrets etc, now twiddle the console so we can move on to the next part of the mission where everyone knows where you are, we're going to throw an army at you, and you're limited in where you can go as you need to be near by to do the hack". So towards the end I mostly used my hitmen operatives since they had actual proper pistols and rifles rather than the weedy tazer pistols most of the others had. Which sure fit into the aesthetic of not being terrible bad guy hacker group - but they're super weak and slow so why would I use them rather than an operative with a auto-rifle?

 

I did like exploring virtual london and seeing some of the sights. Some really weird gore going on though - like I found a flower bed with feet and hands in it. And hidden torture rooms and such. But also some nice things like Bowie mural. Also a hilarious advert for a burger paid for in pounds and weighed in pounds called "The Churchill". Which was funny given everything was in a crypto currency (foreshadowing!!!!). Also kinda neat how London lends itself to a kind of video-game map layout.

 

I don't see us getting a 4th Watch_Dogs game for some time now.

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Lost Ember

 

This was definitely a game. It had a story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and you controlled the main character.

 

In seriousness this game was just okay. The story was moderately interesting, but it was too slowly revealed, and the twist I saw coming almost at the beginning and then wrote it off because it would have been too obvious. It's pretty, and a cool concept (you play as a wolf spirit who can possess animals, no combat, just exploration), but really just overstayed its welcome in pretty much every way. It didn't help that for the last 1/3 of the game I kept getting stuck and not being able to find the way forward.

 

So yeah, it wasn't bad, but I also don't exactly recommend it.

 

Grade: C

[TheMightyEthan]

The Pathless

 

This game is cool. I don't really know how to describe it. Thematically it's like a more cartoony, less dark Shadow of the Colossus, but gameplay wise it's completely different. You've travelled to an island where five gods reside, they've been cursed by an evil wizard(?), and you have to free them. Nearly all of your interactions involve shooting things with your bow (which auto-locks, no aiming required), including traversal, which requires shooting these floating things to make yourself go faster. It's hard to explain, but quite good, it accomplishes exactly what it's trying to do, and it's challenging without being frustrating.

 

Grade: A