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

[TheMightyEthan]

Spoiler

 

[Mister Jack]

Digimon Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memory

 

Took me a while to finish this one because Resident Evil 8 came out but I finally got around to finishing up this collection. Hacker's Memory isn't a sequel as much as it is a side-story that takes place during the previous game. Mechanically it isn't super different from the other game either. There are some minor quality of life improvements. There's a hack that increases your running speed on the field, taking missions now transports you to the mission location instead of forcing you to walk there yourself (a huge time saver), and there are a few balance tweaks. Other than that and some new Digimon in the roster it plays more or less the same, which is fine. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The story to this game is slightly shorter than the other game, but I actually found it more interesting and the characters were more likable. This does assume that you've played Cyber Sleuth though so if you don't play that one before playing this one you're going to have a hard time understanding what's going on. Both are fine games, though. I've got my eye on the upcoming Digimon Survive now, which looks like a cross between Danganronpa and Fire Emblem. I hope it turns out to be good. If it does, I'm on board. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

 

This game is just so wonderful, and it holds up surprisingly well. The changes they've made are (for the most part) subtle enough to still feel like you remember, while fixing some of the jankiness of the original. It's obviously an old game, but it doesn't feel as old as I would have expected, and the story is as great as it ever was. I highly recommend it to anyone who already loves Mass Effect, as well as anyone who's interested but never gotten into it.

 

5/5

[toxicitizen]

Halo: Combat Evolved - Anniversary Edition

 

I've never owned an Xbox so I've never really paid much attention to (or had any interest in) Halo. I wouldn't say I went into this with low expectations, but I definitely went in with no expectations. So it was kind of a shock to see just how much this 20 year old game holds up.

 

Now, like I said, I went in basically blind. I had tried a mission or two and a little bit of multiplayer with friends back in 2001 but that was it. So I didn't know anything about Halo other than it's the guy with the green helmet. At first I thought the shooting felt kinda weightless but I got over that pretty quickly because the combat is actually pretty fun. So I was enjoying the campaign just fine until halfway through it starts getting all creepy and suddenly I'm being swarmed by little Cthulhu monsters. And it's at this point that I'm starting to wonder: Why did no one ever tell me Halo was good?!?

 

Some levels with the Flood were a little frustrating (I swear sometimes these motherfuckers would spawn infinitely until I died and on reload they just kinda didn't? I never really got what was going on there) but overall this is just a solid campaign. You can definitely tell it came out in 2001 but I'd honestly rank it up there with the first Half-Life. It's just that good.

 

And man, that soundtrack! I knew the main Halo theme was great but this is such a blatant example of how forgettable and unexceptional game soundtracks have become. I can't remember the last time I actually noticed the soundtrack in a game. Like, literally stop and go "woah this kinda slaps!" Actually, no, that was Witcher 3 last year but other than that my point stands.

 

Some tracks could be right out of a sci-fi movie epic

 

 

while others gave me Deus Ex flashbacks

 

 

Oh and how great is it that you can switch between the original and remastered graphics in real-time, at the press of a button? All remasters should have this!

 

And while on the subject of graphics, the remastered ones do a good job of making the game feel a bit more modern because some areas in the original can feel bland and textureless. But there's also moments when the remastered textures feel overly busy and take away from the original art direction. Mostly when it comes to the alien architecture within the Halo. I always found the bare concrete look to be kinda visually striking. I mean, like I said, I only played the early missions briefly but I still remembered the look. If that's not strong art direction then I don't know what is.

 

For all I know, maybe the remastered graphics are more consistent with future games but there were some areas where I felt the new ones to be a little busy visually in a way that made it less awe-inspiring.

 

So yeah, I've officially taken the first step on my MCC journey and it's off to a pretty strong start!

Edited May 25, 2021 by toxicitizen

[Mal]

Welcome to the Halo Choir.

[TheMightyEthan]

14 hours ago, toxicitizen said:

Why did no one ever tell me Halo was good?!?

 

We tried! 

 

And yeah, you're right about the remastered graphics being too busy on the alien architecture (especially the doors in Assault on the Control Room), the later games definitely aren't like that. 343 definitely learned their lesson though, because the remastered graphics in H2A are much closer to the original style.

 

I just realized that H1A was released for the 10th anniversary, and this year is the 10th anniversary of the remaster... Maybe they'll remaster it again with a style more true to the original vision. 

[Mister Jack]

Persona 5 Strikers

 

Took me roughly 35 hours to finish. I usually hate musou games but ended up liking this one quite a bit and that comes down to the battles feeling closer to Persona than they do to Dynasty Warriors. Yes, you fight huge groups of mooks that you swat away by bashing square and sometimes triangle, but you also frequently have to consider elemental weaknesses and deal with buffs and debuffs much like in the original game. You can't get by in this one just by button mashing. Plus, you need to manage an entire party, not just one character, and each party member feels different to play. This went a LONG way toward keeping the game from getting as tedious as Dynasty Warriors always gets whenever I try to play it. 

 

This game is shorter than Persona 5 but it still has a fully fleshed out story that is far from an afterthought, so I appreciated that. There's no calendar system or confidants or social stats with this one, but you still spend plenty of time hanging out with the Phantom Thieves and enjoying their camaraderie. It doesn't just rush you from one dungeon to the next. Speaking of dungeons, the dungeons in this game aren't quite as interesting as the palaces were, but they're mostly fine and look distinct enough from one another to avoid a copy-pasted feeling, even if you do the same thing in a lot of them. 

 

I only have two big criticisms that bring the game down for me. Firstly, you can't manually fuse Personas anymore. You can only choose preselected fusions from a list. Because of this I was stuck with useless Personas for longer than I liked because I couldn't do anything with them. Why is it set up like this? It makes no sense to me, plus this system means it's harder to get the abilities you want. My other criticism is that boss fights take waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. I'm talking up to 20+ minutes of just whacking on them over and over. Even when you exploit weaknesses and set up All Out Attacks it does practically no damage. You just gotta keep chipping away with single digit damage numbers. God help you if you get party wiped right before the end too because that means you're doing it all over again. It's extremely draining and I honestly wouldn't blame anyone who sets the boss fights to easy just to get them over with faster. 

 

I doubt I'll be playing any more musou games going forward, but this one at least was mostly pretty decent.

[TheMightyEthan]

At 35 hours I'm assuming you didn't get the platinum?

[Mister Jack]

No. I'll probably go back and do NG+ to mop up some trophies I didn't get. Whether or not I get the platinum will depend on how much of a pain it is to fill out the persona compendium. It's definitely going to be more hassle than it was in the original game.

[TheMightyEthan]

Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition

 

I want to preface what I'm about to say with the comment that this is a great game, one of the best games of the PS360 generation, and it still holds up today.

 

That said, I've finally figured out why it's my least favorite Mass Effect game, when mechanically and technically it's better than ME1 in every single way: the plot structure. The way ME2 is set up, most of the "main" missions feel like side quests, and there are only like 3-4 missions that truly feel like part of the main plot. The whole dirty dozen set up is cool, and all of the companion missions are great, but the way it's all organized means the game doesn't really have much of an overall flow to the plot.

 

But again, still a fantastic game, and Lair of the Shadow Broker is still probably the best (non-expansion) DLC I've ever played. Arrival is up there too. (Pro-tip: save Arrival for the very last thing you do, it's a perfect segue from 2 to 3).

 

5/5

[toxicitizen]

Halo 2 - Anniversary Edition

 

Yeah, I think I love this series. It's basically more of the same although the original was my idea of what Halo is for so long that the small changes (the HUD, for example) were a little jarring early on. The campaign starts out really strong and at first I thought I would enjoy it even more than the original since the mission design was much more interesting to me. But it ultimately sort of evened out with the first one for a few reasons.

 

While I liked them at first, after a while the Arbiter missions just had me kinda wondering why I was spending so much time not playing as Master Chief.  Then at the very end the game decided that from this point on I would be fighting nothing but these huge bullet sponge motherfuckers and that got old real fast. Combine that with a sniper rifle that overheats if you so much as think about firing twice in a row and, yeah... The first one also had a bit of a difficulty spike near the end but this one frustrated me a lot more.

 

There are so many achievements in this fucking thing that I never really believed it would be realistic to get all of them but I still liked the idea of eventually revisiting the campaigns on harder difficulties. But I think Halo 2 just put me off of ever trying Legendary and LASO. Fuck that noise lol.

 

Also, I knew about the infamous cliffhanger ending and it still almost caught me off guard. It just doesn't feel like an ending at all. Not so much because something is missing but rather because something is off about the structure of the last few missions. Like, I'm fighting the final boss as the Arbiter? Really?

 

I could probably jump right into Halo 3 but I think I'll take a bit of a break to play something else. Don't wanna go through the whole thing too quickly and get burned out. Plus I started Horizon Zero Dawn a few days ago and barely touched it so I think I'll focus on that a bit for now.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, Halo 2 has the worst ending of any game ever. It doesn't so much end as just stop. Can you imagine playing that at launch and not even knowing when Halo 3 was coming out? It was awful.

[toxicitizen]

3 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Yeah, Halo 2 has the worst ending of any game ever. It doesn't so much end as just stop. Can you imagine playing that at launch and not even knowing when Halo 3 was coming out? It was awful.

 

Yeah, it's a shit cliffhanger (and I say this as someone that actually loves cliffhangers) but in the context of the MCC it's really no big deal since you can just jump right into Halo 3 if you want and basically treat it like when they do back-to-back sequels with movies.

 

But as a normal game release years apart from both the original and Halo 3? Man, it's fucking terrible lol. And this was from before the era where story DLC became a thing, right? Like, people's only expectations for more was Halo 3 and nothing else?

[TheMightyEthan]

23 minutes ago, toxicitizen said:

And this was from before the era where story DLC became a thing, right? Like, people's only expectations for more was Halo 3 and nothing else?

 

Yep, I think Halo 2 got a couple of multiplayer map packs, but nothing story related.

 

From what I understand basically due to development problems Halo 2 ended up only having Acts 1 and 2 of their planned 3-act story, and act 3 got pushed into Halo 3. That's definitely what it feels like.

[TheMightyEthan]

Mass Effect 3 - Legendary Edition

 

Holy shit, this game is so good. Easily the best of the trilogy, even with the (still) slightly lackluster ending. I can say at least now with the updated ending it isn't disappointing per se, it's just okay, but it does have adequate falling action to feel resolved.

 

The rest of the game though is amazing. It's so great how it wraps up all the little threads from the first two games, and everything feeds into something, even if it's just a little interaction on the Citadel. The game as whole really does feel like the culmination of the first two. It's also fantastic how they made every little side mission in this game tie into your overall goal by contributing to galactic readiness in a way that feels at least somewhat natural, so you don't have the "why am I getting this little old lady her groceries when I have a galaxy to save?" problem that a lot of RPGs have. You're doing it because her having enough to eat will help the war effort, and you can see exactly how it helped in the war assets console.

 

I had honestly forgotten how good this whole trilogy is. I think it might be my favorite series of all time.

 

5/5

[TheMightyEthan]

FF7R: Episode Intermission

 

That was cool, kinda makes me want to replay the main game. I probably would if I weren't getting Ratchet and Clank tomorrow. It's about 5 hours, and it felt kinda short, not because of the actual length, but because it ends kind of abruptly. I'm sure, like the main game, I would have had a better understanding of what was going on and who these people were if I'd played the original. It wasn't that I felt lost, more like it just felt like characters were coming out of nowhere without really being introduced. For some reason that didn't really bother me though, I came away with an overall pretty positive impression of it.

 

4/5

[Mister Jack]

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

 

Spread this one out over three days. Took maybe....15 hours or so all together? I'm not totally sure, though. At any rate, this is a strong contender for the best game in the series, up there with Up Your Arsenal and A Crack in Time. The story isn't quite as standalone as Insomniac would have you believe but the game does a good job filling newcomers in on any important details from past entries so you won't feel lost if this is your first R&C game. Rivet is a great character and there are other great side characters I won't spoil. Although you spend a lot of time as Rivet, she also doesn't completely overshadow Ratchet either. They both get a respectable amount of focus in the plot. 

 

Right now this is also, in my opinion, the best looking PS5 game there is. The visuals, especially in the cutscenes, are nearly Pixar-tier when you play in 4K, and even then it still runs at a rock solid 60 FPS. I can't recall ever encountering a single noticeable frame drop. More impressively, I did not see a loading screen even once throughout the entire game. It takes maybe two seconds to respawn after you die but that's really just nitpicking. This game really shows off the PS5 SSD in extremely impressive ways. Planets will often shift through dimensions, which means that you have alternate versions of the entire map you're on that you're rapidly switching between back and forth in less than a second. I never picked up on any obvious loading smokescreens like overly long elevator rides or slow walk and talk sections either. This game is just always ready for whatever you want it to do and it's fantastic. 

 

Aside from being a technical marvel, the gameplay has gotten a pretty big upgrade too. There's more focus on mobility than ever before, so you can move faster, jump farther, and dodge quicker than any other game in the series. The enemy AI compensates by being quite aggressive, although just how aggressive they are depends on your difficulty. The default difficulty was a little easy for me so if you're used to these games you might want to turn it up slightly if you want a challenge. It never approaches bullet hell territory but you're almost never going to be able to fight while standing still. Jumping and dashing at nearly all times is mandatory to survive. I also enjoyed the Clank puzzles in this one more than I usually do. Hell, even the hacking minigame is fun. I repeat: the hacking minigame is fun.

 

I'm already jumping back into challenge mode for my second playthrough, which has weapons and upgrades that are only available in this mode so there's your replay value right there. At least for now I'm crowning this as my favorite PS5 exclusive, and it's up there with RE8 for my personal GOTY so far. I'm honestly kind of torn between the two.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm not done with it yet, and I don't think it'll unseat Returnal for me as my favorite PS5 exclusive, but it's really really good. And yeah, it's gorgeous. I've been playing in RT Performance mode, and it's amazing, better image quality than some native 4k games I've seen even though in this mode it tops out at 1440p.

[TheMightyEthan]

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

This game is fantastic, it felt like a Nintendo game in the best way possible. I was a little wary because I wasn't a huge fan of R&C 2016, but the reviews were so good and I wanted a true next-gen game to play. The reviews were warranted, if anything I think it's slightly underrated. I can't exactly put my finger on what about it is so much more fun than 2016, but it just feels better to play overall. There wasn't a single point in the game where I was like "do I really have to do this?", including the minigame segments. That's an achievement.

 

The best way I can praise it is to say that before this game I didn't care about R&C as a franchise, and now I'm definitely an R&C fan. Can't wait for the next one.

 

5/5

 

*As an aside, I also think the rift tech is more impressive than people give it credit for. I've seen people say we've had games that do this before, like Titanfall 2's Effect and Cause (still one of the best levels in any shooter ever), or Dishonored 2's A Crack in the Slab, but this game doesn't just change between two different versions of the same level, there are several points throughout where you go at speed through rifts between multiple entirely different levels in rapid succession. Even though you usually are only spending a few seconds in each level when that happens, you can see enough to tell it's actually loaded in the whole level, or at least most of it, then it's on to the next, and then the next. It's insane.

[Thursday Next]

9 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

As an aside, I also think the rift tech is more impressive than people give it credit for.

 

The pocket dimension stuff is, technically, astounding. The complete lack of loading times when switching between the two levels is mind-blowing.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I mean look at this shit:

 

 

That's at least 4 entirely different levels that you just go through one after the other.

[Thursday Next]

Exactly, you can even see it logging your arrival on a new planet when you pass through the dimensions, indicating that you are loading that particular level and not some sort of special cut-down version specially made for the time trial.

[TheMightyEthan]

Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order

 

This game was pretty good. I must have just been in the wrong mood when I tried to play it before, because I bounced off pretty early, but this time I really enjoyed it. The reason for your galaxy spanning adventure is kind of contrived, but the adventure itself is fun and works well. My biggest complaint is that there's a little bit too much going back to the same places over and over. I get that this is a soulslike, and that's how those are, but when it's different planets it doesn't work as well as when it's like a city or something that you're going through. But really that's a pretty minor complaint, and on the whole I was very much along for the ride.

 

4/5

[MetalCaveman]

Control

 

Holy cow this was awesome!

 

Love the secret agency that deals with the paranormal kind of stories, and this delivered.

 

Spoiler

I like that the FBC deals with things that range from a post-it note that multiplies itself, all the way to interdimensional entities that can destroy our world.

 

Gameplay was fun and the powers were pretty cool.

 

Story is pretty neat, I enjoyed that there's enough mystery to keep you asking questions about the FBC and surrounding characters while still being pretty clear on what's going on in the main storyline.

 

Of course it also has some pretty cool moments, and some pretty ridiculous ones too.

 

Spoiler

 

 

RIP that dude that got eaten by the fridge.

 

The AWE DLC was neat, and it probably means I should actually finish Alan Wake at some point.

 

Biggest complaint is that some of the coolest boss fights are found in side quests, main mission bosses are just the same dudes with more HP, for the most part.

 

Spoiler

Hoping to see Jesse and Alan work together in Alan Wake 2... Or Control 2, or Alan Control... Control Wake?

 

[Mister Jack]

I liked Control for the most part but I do wish they'd gone in harder on the crazy supernatural aspects. With some exceptions you're mostly fighting possessed soldiers or geometric shapes. More crazy and out there areas would have been nice too. That one you posted is the highlight because almost all the other areas are pretty mundane.