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

[Thursday Next]

7 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

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.

I know what you mean. Would have liked them to do more SCP type stuff. The Hiss were a bit samey after a while.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to what they can do with a sequel.

[Mister Jack]

Cyberpunk 2077

 

It's finally at a point where it doesn't crash long enough for me to play it, although it did still crash during the credits, naturally. It's still far from bug free, but it's not completely and utterly broken anymore at least. But the bugs are all well-documented at this point and the game will continue to be patched so for the sake of this post I'm going to be really generous and pretend the game is bug-free and just judge it for how it's designed. 

 

Even if this game had shipped day one without a single bug, the best I can really say is that it's good. Not great. Good. Cyberpunk has a problem where it's as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle. There are lots of cars to buy (and everyone on your phone REALLY wants to sell you their cars) but as far as I can tell there's no meaningful difference in performance between them and I mostly stuck with the default car for the whole game. You can also customize V's clothes with lots of fashion options but the game is always in first-person so what's the point? Each gender only has two romance options, or only one if you're not bisexual. The city, at least to my knowledge, had no real side-activities or minigames like what you'd find in a GTA or even a Yakuza. There were side missions, of course, but if you feel like just chilling out and goofing off I don't think there's really anything like that for you to do in Night City. It's disappointing.

 

I will, however, praise the game on the combat and character building. There are lots of guns to find and many of them feel different and will sometimes even have special functions. Encounters also give you lots of freedom to decide how to approach them, whether you want to go in guns blazing, stealth your way through, or rely on hacking to deal with enemies. How effective each approach is will of course depend on how you're choosing to spend your points when you level up. 

The story was fine, I guess. Keanu's character is a total dickhead but that's on purpose so it's cool. He's fun to watch. By the time it was done though I still couldn't help feeling a little bit let down by the experience. I'm sure part of that was because it's hard to enjoy something when you're constantly worrying that it's going to break on you, but even if that wasn't an issue it really just doesn't live up to the hype. Night City is sprawling and gorgeous to look at but it all just kinda feels like window dressing. It's probably worth going through once for the story but I don't think this is going to be one of those open world games people come back to over and over even after all the major bugs are fixed.

[toxicitizen]

1 hour ago, Mister Jack said:

The city, at least to my knowledge, had no real side-activities or minigames like what you'd find in a GTA or even a Yakuza. There were side missions, of course, but if you feel like just chilling out and goofing off I don't think there's really anything like that for you to do in Night City. It's disappointing.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure what they were thinking trying to pass this off as a GTA-like sandbox. That's the one area where the game falls flat on its face. When even your police AI is half-baked, you really have no business mentioning your game in the same sentence as GTA. I was hoping for a Deus Ex-like immersive sim but really it's just the same kind of story-driven open-world RPG as Witcher 3. There's really no kind of deep simulation of, well, anything going on anywhere in Night City.

 

Thankfully, like you said, it does offer you more options and tools than Witcher 3. Not that I had an issue with this in Witcher 3 but in Cyberpunk I definitely would have.

 

So is it in a better state on PS4 now or did you play it on PS5? I'm curious because I recently heard that it's coming back to PSN soon and I was kinda shocked because they've been pretty quiet for a while and I haven't heard about any kind of game-changing updates, just plain old bug fixes. I know they released a patch recently but they've been quiet for so long that at this point I'm wondering what the hell they're doing. As far as I'm aware, none of the promised free DLC has come out and they still haven't even announced the paid expansions.

 

It's gotten to the point where I just low-key assumed they've been chipping away on a mega-update and will surprise everyone with a Witcher-style Enhanced Edition in a year or so that turns the game into something closer to what they promised. But given the state the game launched in I feel like it would be pretty naive of me to get my hopes up that high lol...

 

But, I mean, that has to be it, right? Because if not then the pace at which they're fixing this thing is fucking abysmal.

[Mister Jack]

I started it on PS4 but put it down until I got a PS5. Even now after all the patches CDPR still straight up advises against playing on a base PS4. I don't think even they really know what they're doing anymore. The multiplayer they promised is canceled now and I've heard rumors that they're having trouble even getting the DLC off the ground. Shit's a mess.

[TheMightyEthan]

From what I've heard it's still bad but not too the extent of being broken on base PS4 anymore, and on PS4 Pro it's okay.

[TheMightyEthan]

Active Neurons 3

 

The third and final (so far) game in the Active Neurons series, I'd say this was the best, and also the hardest. It's great to play via remote play from a phone screen, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes little puzzle games.

 

5/5

[TheMightyEthan]

Death Squared

 

This is another cool little puzzle game. You control two cubes, one with each stick, and have to move them around to solve various puzzle rooms. Some of the puzzles took a long time to figure out, but I was never frustrated, I always felt like I could figure it out. The only frustration that I had was from accidentally moving the wrong cube and getting myself killed, which is on me.

 

4/5

[MetalCaveman]

Metroid Zero Mission

 

That section with the space pirates was harder and scarier than the SA-X in Fusion, specially because there's only one SA-X, while there are a trillion space pirates there.

 

Metroid Fusion

 

Still hold up, still my favourite, surprised at how much I remember of it given how long it's been since I last played it. \m/ \m/

[Mister Jack]

A Plague Tale: Innocence

 

As some of you may know, this is the July PS+ game for PS5 owners. Took me somewhere between 12-15 hours to beat if I had to guess. As the name implies, this game takes place during the middle ages and is about two kids, Amicia and Hugo, who are forced to flee their home when the Inquisition comes knocking at their door and then have to find a way to survive while surrounded by the black plague.

 

At its heart this is a stealth/puzzle game that usually has you doing one of two things. You're either trying to work your way through areas full of guards or you're trying to use the environment to create a safe path through an area infested with plague rats, which are so numerous and aggressive that they feel more like a supernatural horror than a pest control problem. Amicia is armed with a sling that she can use to hurl various types of crafted ammo, but she's definitely not a fighter. Aside from occasionally braining guards with rocks if they're not wearing helmets, Amicia is terrible in a direct confrontation and she goes down in one hit from any enemy, so her ammo is really meant more for creating distractions or setting up death traps while remaining undetected. To be honest there's probably very little to this that you haven't seen before in other stealth games, but it's still fine, if not revolutionary. Navigating through rat infested areas is a bit more unique. The rats are afraid of light so you'll frequently need to find or create a light source to make a safe path. Sometimes that isn't possible, which means you'll need to either find a way to corral the rats into an area where they can't hurt you or distract them somehow. This is usually pretty straightforward but there were a few occasions where I really had to stop and think about how I was going to get through some of these rat clusters. As a side note, the haptic feedback lets you feel the constant skittering of all the little tiny rat feet all around you and it's pretty gross and creepy in an effective way.

 

The story is decent. It's not super original or anything but it's well presented and it kept me wanting to see what would happen next, at least, but it does take a turn near the end that I'm not sure everyone will like. It's going to be a matter of personal taste as to whether it works or not. The voice acting is quite good. Facial animations can be a bit stiff and wooden during cutscenes, but it is my understanding that the development team for this was on the small side so I'm willing to cut them a little slack for this. However, the characters sometimes have an annoying tendency to talk over each other, and you can't blame that on studio size.

 

If I have one big complaint it's that the game can sometimes be very frustrating. It's not particularly hard but there is VERY little room for error. If you get detected or you accidentally put your foot too close to a swarm of rats then it's going to mean instant death probably 90% of the time. There are items you can craft to give yourself a last second escape if you need one, but they're expensive to make and if you rely on them too much you won't have enough materials to craft your equipment upgrades. The checkpoints are pretty generous so you rarely lose more than a couple minutes of progress, which is good, but even then there are certain sections I found myself having to repeat 10 times or more just because I stepped very slightly out of line for less than two seconds. Slightly slower enemy detection speed and an extra couple of seconds to wade your way out of a swarm of rats would fix this. As is, you have to do everything perfectly or else the game raps your knuckles and tells you to do it again.

 

If you happen to have a PS5, I see no reason not to check out this one. It has a few annoyances but it doesn't overstay its welcome and it's fun while it lasts. 40 bucks on Steam is a little steep, but it'd be at a good price during a sale, I bet. Supposedly there's a sequel coming out next year too.

[TheMightyEthan]

Maybe I'll play that next, I'm about to finish a playthrough of Dishonored 2 and I wanted to play something else before jumping back in to my Emily playthrough, but everything else on my list is a massive rpg.

[Mister Jack]

Returnal

 

Well this was certainly...interesting. This is a bullet hell roguelike, and a pretty good one too. Combat is fast and frantic, and despite Selene's age she can run, jump, and dash quite impressively. You'll be zipping all over the field dodging projectiles, and the optimal strategy here isn't to line up your aim but just to spray and pray while moving around constantly and making sure no attacks ever touch you. It's chaotic, it's quick, and it is hard as balls. Either Ethan is a lot better at bullet hell games than I gave him credit for or he got some seriously lucky drops in his runs because it took me dozens of tries to finally get all the way to the end and I got frustrated quite a few times. The game is usually pretty good about giving you some kind of progress in each run. Unless you die really early on you're likely to, at the very least, pick up some ether, which is a permanent currency that is used to unlock new items. Thanks to that, there were only a few cases where I died and felt like I had wasted all that time with nothing to show for it.

 

The enemy designs were okay, but they didn't really have much personality to them. The boss battles are pretty challenging, but it's only mandatory to beat each of them once. Gameplay-wise, this is a pretty fun action shooter, but I think where Returnal dropped the ball was in its story. Mainly because I have no idea what the hell is going on. I tried, believe me. I listened to every log and optional bit of dialogue I could find. I really wanted to understand the mystery of how and why Selene keeps reincarnating on this planet every time she dies. Unfortunately, by the time I reached the end I really felt no closer to understanding things than I did when I started. It's all just too incomprehensible and poorly explained, and that's really disappointing because I was legitimately invested in the mystery only to be left feeling like the writer got super into making all this buildup but then had no idea how to give it a proper payoff. It's like watching LOST all over again.

 

If you like third-person shooters and roguelikes then I'd recommend this purely for the gameplay. I can't recommend it for the story, though. It's just too obscure.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Mister Jack

[Thursday Next]

10 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

Returnal

 

 

The one thing I don't like about Returnal, is the lack of meta-progress. I love that with Hades you are collecting stuff every run, Darkness for Mirror upgrades, Gems for house upgrades, Nectar for friendships, Diamonds/Titan Blood more rarely, so every run is giving you progress of some sort.

 

A lot of Returnal runs feel like, "ok, that was a bust, but I learned things and grew as a person". Even if you get a bunch of ether, that just adds items to the pool of potential drops. I just sorta wish that they gave you permanent integrity boosts, or something. I'd also like a Hades style "God Mode" that made you more tanky with every death so that the game sort of meets you half-way.

[Mister Jack]

I bought Hades in the last Steam sale but I have yet to get around to it. Next time I'm in a roguelike mood maybe I'll install that. 

[TheMightyEthan]

13 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

I have no idea what the hell is going on

 

Alien space horror magic, duh.

 

I'm actually planning to go back and 100% it here in the near future, and apparently there's a secret ending you get when you do that, so I'll report back if it makes anything clearer.

[Mister Jack]

Omori

 

Finally wrapped this one up a little while ago. It's an Earthbound inspired RPG, but it's really only like Earthbound in the sense that it's a turn based RPG about four kids adventuring through weird and imaginative locations. I really wish I could talk about the story even a little bit because there's a lot going on here, but this is one of those games where you can hardly say anything without giving away too much. All I can really say is that every time you launch the game it warns you about themes of depression, anxiety, and suicide and it does so for good reason. There's a lot more depth here than the cutesy graphics would lead you to believe, and I think anyone ought to experience it at least once. There are some story segments that drag on for a bit, but the payoff at the end is worth it.

[Thursday Next]

I've beaten the final boss in Hades a few times now, so will consider it "beaten". It's really good. The god bantz works in a way that I feel it didn't in that other mythology game. Fenyx or something like that? The rogue-like elements are familiar and enjoyable. The meta progress is satisfying and it has an "easy" mode that increases your tankyness by a couple of % each time you die so that eventually you hit a sweet spot where you are being challenged, but are not getting completely hosed and hitting a brick wall.

[Mister Jack]

Got the final true ending for Returnal. Story still makes no sense. In fact, it makes even less sense now than before.

[toxicitizen]

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

 

Given the more contained setting (and what HowLongToBeat told me), I was under the impression that this one would be shorter than Lacrimosa of Dana and lol. I guess it technically was but only marginally so.

 

 

Not that I'm complaining though. This is a game I bought full price at launch so I definitely got my money's worth. It's just that these games are such a far cry from the old ones. The old ones are so short and sweet that they leave you wanting more. A replay of Ys I and II usually turns into a replay of Felghana as well, and fuck it let's do Origin too while we're at it because why not. But these last two are so fucking long that it's just not the same. They're really good so they don't overstay their welcome by any means but by the time they're over I've had my fill.

 

So yeah, looks like Trails of Ys is going to be the norm going forward. I thought it would be completely different because of the setting but this is basically Lacrimosa of Dana all over again. It's just set in a big cursed city full of spooky monsters instead of an uncharted island crawling with dinosaurs. There's also actual antagonists this time around as opposed to just... whatever was going on in the last one. But most of the game structure and gameplay mechanics are identical and the elements that are new are mostly superficial.

 

Like, yeah, Adol has anime superpowers now but the combat still plays pretty much the same. There's an emphasis on vertical traversal that wasn't there before but they don't do as much with it as you might expect. I think it was added mainly to get more mileage of their world map because the city isn't actually that large. Hell, early on they make a big deal about how the curse keeps you trapped within the walls of the city but at some point you just end up going outside anyway because you've run out of places to explore in the city.

 

It does improve in the one area that badly needed it, though: the graphics. I mean, it still looks like a Falcom game but I went back to look at screenshots of Lacrimosa of Dana and holy fuck it looks so much worse than I remembered. I know it actually was a Vita game but I don't remember it looking so much like one. Monstrum Nox looks like it was made within the last decade, or at least very late in the previous one.

 

Lacrimosa of Dana is the one people have been jokingly calling Trails of Ys but the fact that Monstrum Nox has you spending a good chunk of your time running around a city and completing side-quests for people made it feel much closer to the Trails series to me. And man, it made me realize just how much I fucking miss Trails lol.

 

I've been mostly checked out on the Trails series for a few years now. The switch to NISA and the increased importance of the missing Crossbell games for Cold Steel III and IV were already a bummer and on top of that I had a pretty rough period with depression and kinda lost interest in games altogether around 2019 and for most of 2020. I'm doing a lot better now and slowly getting into games again and yeah, I need me some Trails, baby. I think a replay of the Sky trilogy is in the cards for me while I wait for Trails from Zero.

[TheMightyEthan]

10 hours ago, Mister Jack said:

Got the final true ending for Returnal. Story still makes no sense. In fact, it makes even less sense now than before.

 

Did you get all the collectibles?

[Mister Jack]

I got enough for the game to give me the trophy for finishing Act 3. If that somehow still isn't enough then screw it, I've got other shit to play.

[TheMightyEthan]

lol, there's a "secret ending" once you get all the collectibles.

[Mister Jack]

It's not the one for the fragments, is it? Because that's all I'm seeing on Youtube.

[TheMightyEthan]

Huh, I guess you're right, looks like I made up the idea that there's another ending for all collectibles.

[toxicitizen]

Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster

 

I mean, what do you want me to say? It's Final Fantasy. If it wasn't good, we wouldn't be coming up on number 16.

 

I have to say, though, these Pixel Remasters turned out really fantastic. Some skepticism was warranted because Square-Enix don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to rereleasing their older JRPGs, especially when it comes to Final Fantasy. But they really knocked it out of the park this time.

 

The redone sprites look gorgeous, especially if you turn on the scanline filter to make them really pop. And apparently they tried to recreate the original Amano art as closely as possible this time so instead of being based on the redone spritework of previous rereleases, they're actually much closer to the original NES versions but of much higher quality.

 

And the redone sprites aren't even the best part! I'm honestly baffled that they didn't lean heavily on this to market these things but they also remade the soundtracks and holy shit, the new arrangements are really fucking good. Honestly, I was mostly concerned about the sprites like everyone else and never really considered the soundtracks. I was already looking forward to FFIV and FFVI the most but I'm even more excited for them now that I know how insanely good the soundtracks are going to be. I mean, just listen!

 

 

 

 

So yeah, these turned out to be way higher quality than I think anyone could've reasonably anticipated. I don't feel like they're overpriced anymore. It's honestly shocking coming from Square-Enix. I really hope this is the amount of effort they'll put into rereleases going forward because this is the kind of love these classics deserve, not whatever the fuck was going on with the previous remake FFVI and the Steam release of Chrono Trigger.

 

And yes, before you ask, I did in fact kill Chaos.

 

 

Now on to FFII!

 

Oh and Square-Enix, once you're done with these do Dragon Quest I-VI you cowards!