Games You Beat in 2023: PXoD Face the Music

[danielpholt]

The Devil in Me

 

Far from my favourite entry in the Dark Pictures Anthology. The core premise is great, but the game never really takes advantage of it and ends losing a lot of what made the earlier games so interesting for me. It's fine, I guess. 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by danielpholt

[TheMightyEthan]

First of the year! I was hoping I'd beat Signalis and get to name the thread. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Signalis

 

This game is basically Dead Space x Dino Crisis, with a 32-bit aesthetic. The plot was weird and confusing and I barely understand what happened, and I loved every second of it.

 

Grade: A+

[MetalCaveman]

Pokémon Scarlet

 

Holy cow that ending was cool, it legit brought tears to my eyes. Didn't expect that.

 

Spoiler

Arven and his disdain for his mother's research and how it made her ignore him, leaving him alone, then learning that Professor Sada was toast all along, killed by berserk Koraidon, hence why she was never there. Her leaving her AI robot self in charge, except her AI version wanted to go against her dream by stopping the time machine, YES, there's a freaking TIME MACHINE here, then the battle against Terminator Sada, her words after you win, then having to go against her again after she's forcefully terastalized as a last resort to stop anyone who tried to turn off the time machine, then her words to Arven after that fight, then her finally freeing herself by using the time machine to travel to the past (most likely dying in the process given what we know of it).

 

That whole section was quite emotional.

 

The three different story paths, Titans, Team Star and the Pokémon league were all fun, granted, I cheesed the hell out of the titans (Nacli and Naclstack FTW!!! lol), but it was still neat, Team Star had a "Are We the Baddies?" kind of feel to it, until you realize

Spoiler

You're stopping them before they become a full-blown villain team, by defeating them, convincing them to go back to school and helping them make friends you're stopping them from being consumed by their grudges, or so I think at least.

 

Penny, Nemona and Arven are all fun characters, specially Nemona, I love how hyped she is about finally finding someone who can battle her at her full strength and still remain friends with her, win or lose.

 

It was also interesting to see how

Spoiler

No one likes Geeta, the grand champion/chairwoman/Big Boss, all gym leaders say that she basically forced them to take the job, which is funny since her team is pathetically weak lol, she even admits Nemona didn't go all out against her during their battle. Armarouge is basically all you need to wipe her team out.

 

The open world thing works well, yes, if you open the map, there's a bunch of icons, but they all mean something, it's not just pointless filler, you can see the tera raids available, the location of your next objectives, fast-travel points and Pokémon Centers, making it not feel cluttered.

 

However, it also has some serious issues, textures have some fun shenanigans going on, popping in and out all over the place, even in the same area, if you take a couple of steps, textures and shadows disappear, reappear, and then disappear again. NPCs move at 5 FPS in certain areas and during cutscenes, tera raids run like they're drunk, an attack will empty the boss' HP, only for it to instantly go back to full, then half, then empty, even with an empty HP bar bosses get an attack in before instantly fainting, etc. The game also crashed a couple of times for me.

 

That said, I still had a ton of fun with it, funny thing, I don't have that many Pokémon games (I checked, the only ones I own are Y, Sword and Scarlet), but every time I play one I have fun, makes me wonder why I don't buy them more often lol.   If this had released in a... Less broken state I'd imagine it might be considered one of the best in the series, maybe.

 

Grade:  Most Excellent! (A+)

Edited January 4, 2023 by MetalCaveman

[toxicitizen]

Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion

 

I dropped this pretty early on back in the day on PSP so I feel like this version of the game is a massive improvement over the original. At least, the combat seems like a massive improvement based on what I've seen on YouTube. I don't think I would've had the patience to clear all 300 missions in the original version. But in this one, once I started grinding them (with some youtube videos on my second monitor) and making myself a broken build, I just couldn't stop.

 

The story is kind of uneven. Zack is a pretty likeable protagonist and all the bits with Aerith are great but holy shit, Genesis fucking sucks. I am really dreading finding out whether or not they're going to bring him back in Rebirth. The last few chapters of the game are pretty great but that mostly covers stuff you find out in FFVII. I'm a little surprised that they don't appear to have tweaked the story at all considering the direction the remake is going, though. I imagine they remastered the game right before Rebirth for a reason...

 

Also, that secret boss Minerva can eat my ass. Completely unfair bullshit fight lol. You basically need a build specifically for her because otherwise she'll sneeze and one-shot you. My build probably wasn't optimal and she still one-shot me quite a few times (you can steal x99 Phoenix Downs from her and it's seriously not optional) but I eventually managed...

 

 

Now I have to decide whether to start something new (Midnight Suns or Trails from Zero) or go back and finish the games I started months ago (Spider-Man and P5R)...

[toxicitizen]

Faith: The Unholy Trinity

 

A friend gifted me this as a late birthday present around Halloween (I think the final chapter had just come out) but I only played the first two chapters then and sorta forgot about it until now. I only got around to playing the last chapter last night and holy fuck, this game is kinda nuts. If the name doesn't ring a bell, this is that horror game with Atari-like graphics but incredibly well-done animations. You've probably seen gifs of it online:

 

 

 

Anyway, for a game with such low-fi graphics, it is insanely atmospheric. This is usually the kind of pre-NES graphics where I nope out. It's too visually hollow for me, I just can't get into it. Not this game, though. This fucking Atari-ass game actually got me with some of its jump scares and some sections had me more nervous than actual AAA horror games. I'm honestly kind of impressed. I may give it a replay next Halloween or whatever and try to get different endings.

[Mister Jack]

I think one of the most effective parts about Faith that doesn't get much mention because it's overshadowed by the incredible presentation is the fact that for 95% of the game your only means of defense is a crucifix, which makes for a really nice balance. You're almost never completely helpless and thus prone to frustration from what feels like unavoidable deaths when something pops up unexpectedly, but at the same time you almost never have the means to permanently kill any demons you come across and can only drive them off temporarily, which gives you just enough agency without removing the tension. I wish more horror games were designed this way.

[toxicitizen]

1 hour ago, Mister Jack said:

I think one of the most effective parts about Faith that doesn't get much mention because it's overshadowed by the incredible presentation is the fact that for 95% of the game your only means of defense is a crucifix, which makes for a really nice balance. You're almost never completely helpless and thus prone to frustration from what feels like unavoidable deaths when something pops up unexpectedly, but at the same time you almost never have the means to permanently kill any demons you come across and can only drive them off temporarily, which gives you just enough agency without removing the tension. I wish more horror games were designed this way.

 

Yeah, it's incredibly effective at giving you a defensive tool while still making you feel kind of helpless. And then there's a section where you have to willingly get rid of it and it's such a "well, I'm fucked!" moment.

[TheMightyEthan]

Somerville

 

I actually liked this game, not sure why it was panned so bad. It's from a new studio started by one of the creators of Limbo and Inside, and while it's not quite as good as those games, it's close. Certainly captures the same feel. The main change is that it's "3D", although really it plays more like 2.5D, you tend to be moving in one direction and have a small amount of cross-wise freedom, but it's limited enough that I think it could easily be converted into a fully 2.5D game like Inside without really losing anything. The powers you have are cool, and really the worst thing I can say about it is a couple of the puzzles were kind of obtuse, but that's to be expected in a puzzle game. Basically, if you liked Playdead's games I'd say give this one a try.

 

Grade: B+

[toxicitizen]

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered

 

Only took me 5 months but I finally finished this thing. I played through like half of the story back when it first came out but then Soul Hackers 2 came out and I wanted to play that before Persona 5 Royal. Oh and they just randomly dropped the Judgment Steam release on me in the middle of that, too. So Spider-Man just fell by the wayside. I would play a few hours of Spidey like once a month (which did wonders for the story's pacing!) but it never managed to fully suck me back in. Probably in part because every single time I'd completely forget how to play and would have to relearn. And since I was playing on Spectacular difficulty, that meant dying a lot. I think I finally realized the main reason I fell off the game while finishing it this week-end, though.

 

So Friday night I decided I wanted to finish the campaign this week-end so I focused on main story missions and had a blast. Then Saturday afternoon I fired up the game and decided to do side-content. And after like an hour I felt like turning the game off. Turns out the side-content in this game kinda sucks! I don't know why it took me so long to realize this because I've seen people complain about it online but it had seemed fine to me while playing. I would play the game like I play all open-world games and just clear as much side-content as I could on my way between main story missions. But at some point I started consciously focusing on the side-content because I could tell I was nearing the end of the story and wanted to get as much of it done before wrapping the game up. And that's when the game becomes kind of miserable. My last few hours in the game were spent getting all the districts to 100%, which was mostly those randomly spawning crimes. And yeah, that... wasn't fun. The combat is great but just mindlessly clearing out groups of enemies just gets repetitive and dull.

 

The main story is great, though. I really enjoyed that. And playing on Spectacular difficulty forced me to really get good at the combat and make use of all my gadgets, so that was fun, too. I still have the story DLCs to do but I don't know if I wanna get into those right now. I need to do a NG+ playthrough on Ultimate difficulty to get 100% of the achievements, anyway, and I'm definitely not doing that anytime soon. I imagine the sequel isn't coming to PC for at least another couple years so I have plenty of time to come back to the game.

[danielpholt]

On 1/8/2023 at 3:17 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

Somerville

 

I actually liked this game, not sure why it was panned so bad. It's from a new studio started by one of the creators of Limbo and Inside, and while it's not quite as good as those games, it's close. Certainly captures the same feel. The main change is that it's "3D", although really it plays more like 2.5D, you tend to be moving in one direction and have a small amount of cross-wise freedom, but it's limited enough that I think it could easily be converted into a fully 2.5D game like Inside without really losing anything. The powers you have are cool, and really the worst thing I can say about it is a couple of the puzzles were kind of obtuse, but that's to be expected in a puzzle game. Basically, if you liked Playdead's games I'd say give this one a try.

 

Grade: B+

 

I was left a little underwhelmed by it all, but I think that's more a fault of my overly lofty expectations. The game itself is fine, the puzzles are bit lacking at times and I feel like towards the end they ditch that part of the game entirely. Biggest issue I had was that I found myself getting stuck in the environment a fair but, which I put down to the 3d/2d art style; that is likely something they'll get better with if they choose to stick with that style. 

 

I've just finished Signalis. It took me a little over 6 hours from front to back, and I ended up really enjoying my time with it. It fits well into short bursts, and isn't overly taxing on my mind, which is perfect for me right now. If I had one complaint it would be that the games plot is......I dunno, I've got no idea what's going on (

Spoiler

something about clones, and a clone who keeps coming back trying to become someone else?

).

 

Visually the game is genuinely really stunning to look at, which for a game made up predominantly of brown and grey colours, is quite the feat. The art really pops during it's cutscenes and the occasional sections of the game where you go into first person are a nice change of pace. It's on Gamepass and I heartily recommend it for anyone who likes OG Resident Evil.

[TheMightyEthan]

So here's my best guess at what's going on in Signalis:

 

Spoiler

You're a Replika, which is a kind of android whose brain is imprinted off of a real person. You've crashed on a planet, after being sent on an extra-solar mission. You're looking for your Gestalt (regular human) crew member/lover. There was a mining colony on this planet, but they Dug Too Deep and dug up the Ancient Evil something, which infected them with a horrible disease and is causing reality to break down. There's some kind of time loop going on, and the more you go through the loop the more you're breaking reality. That's why the administrator is trying to stop you.

 

[MetalCaveman]

Ghostbusters: The Videogame Remastered

 

This was really fun, the different options available for the proton pack on top of the usual capture stream were cool, and having the original cast voice their characters was most excellent.

 

Only issue for me were a couple of fights against flying books and skulls, those were kinda annoying as it was easy to get swarmed leading to several "deaths", only a couple game overs though, as most of the time you do have at least one other Ghostbuster with you who can pick you up. Later on, once you get the Meson Collider weapon these enemies become much easier to deal with.

 

Your AI teammates and fellow ghostbusters actually do stuff, capture ghosts, send out traps, use different equipment, they're all really helpful, their lines reacting to certain things are a plus, during one section Ray suggested flanking some ghosts, after I went the same way he did on accident he said:

 

"Flanking generally means I go one way, you go the other, we catch them in the middle, I know you're a rookie but this is basic stuff."

 

 

The story was pretty good too, honestly feels way more like a sequel than Afterlife, which makes sense as it was written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.

 

Spoiler

The ending dialogue when they tell you they're no longer in need of a rookie, but offer you the opportunity to start a franchise elsewhere was really funny.

 

Overall, a fun TPS that changes things by being more about capturing ghosts and not just blasting them into oblivion, and a nice combination of humour and creepiness, also, you get to be a Ghostbuster, what more could you want?

 

Grade: A+ (Bustin' makes me feel good!! )

[MetalCaveman]

Dragon's Crown Pro

 

This is one gorgeous game, Vanillaware's art style is always most excellent! \m/ \m/

 

My only issue is that, while you can skip all of the early stuff when starting with a new character, the gate you use to get to the dungeons never gets fixed, and there's no way to get it to it's working state, so you're left with a gate that drops you in a random dungeon, or paying to use the stables, which increases in cost every time you use it, not a problem later on or in higher difficulties, but when starting with a new character this is kind of a pain.

 

Grade: A+ (A for Amazon and Sorceress make the best party members )

 

 

[MetalCaveman]

Wish: Israfil Saga

 

A simple, nice, relaxing match 3 type of game, with some... Special scenes (if you download the patch ).

 

Originally I was going to give it a lower rating, since some stages are quite challenging and upgrades are fairly expensive (1300 gold and upwards), couple that with the fact that replaying a stage only gives you about 30-50 gold and I was sure it'd be hours of grinding, until I realized you can replay other character stages, and those give you 900 gold per re-run, so that improved things a fair bit.

 

The story is... There, kinda. The concept itself is nothing new, evil emperor, small ragtag group of heroes band together to defeat said evil emperor, peace returns to the land, etc. The issue is that most of it reads like it was translated with the crappiest machine translation software in the world, and chapter 3 just reads like they threw random words in and called it a day.

 

A certain character's name changes spelling every time, tons of typos, tons of sentences that don't make any sense, and my favourite, instead of using beastfolk or monster girls, it goes for... Furries, and that leads to some very, very funny lines.

 

Still, all issues considered, for less than a buck, it's not bad.

 

Grade: B+ (for gameplay, characters, and art style).

             F (for Fuck if I know what's going on with the story ).

[Thursday Next]

God of War: Ragnarok

 

Got the platinum on this one. Game did a great job of developing the characters further. I'm not massively fond of Atreus still, but tend to struggle with child actors generally. Looking forward to seeing how they continue to develop Kratos' character

 

I think this game does pretty much everything right, except that you cannot skip cutscenes. I like the metroidvania-esque unlocking exploration tools, the combat feels good, the voice acting (young actors aside) is great, the post game content feels meaningful enough, and there are some challenging optional bosses.

 

The only thing that I feel is a bit clunky sometimes is weapon switching and arrow switching. There are a couple of bosses/challenges that require swapping between types of arrow/weapon element and (for arrows in particular) cycling through them feels a bit hit-and-miss. I'd prefer a "hold button to switch" system like Horizon has. 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Thursday Next

[danielpholt]

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

 

80 hours later and it's finally done. I've beaten Cuphead, I've beaten Elden Ring, but neither of those games can lay a torch on Sekiro. There were times, especially early that I thought I was going to have to give up on my quest, but through perseverance, and sheer stubbornness, I got through it. I'll likely never play this game again. That's not to say it's a bad game, far from it. I think it might be one of the better game I've ever played, it's just...it demands so much.

 

I've now finished Elden Ring and Sekiro. I love both games deeply. Elden Ring was hard, but it allows you to outmanoeuvre it in some ways; if you're stuck you can go elsewhere, level up and come back later. Sekiro offers no such luxury, you've got to get up close and figure it out. All in all, it's probably going to end up being one of my most memorable gaming experiences going forward. 

 

A+

 

 

Elechead 

 

Super tight little puzzle-platformer that has a pretty simple core mechanic, but builds on it in some really smart ways. Without a doubt one of the better platformer's I've played in recent years. Doesn't overstay it's welcome, offers some extra difficulty for those that want it and feels super tight at the same time. 

 

B

 

Hyper Light Drifter

 

Oh boy. Over the course of 4 nights I started and finished this one and it left me with one question: Why did it take me so long to come to it? 

 

A

 

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by danielpholt

[Thursday Next]

I love Sekiro, I think the first Ogre dude you fight in the stocks is a major skill-check that is a bit unbalanced. Once you get past that bottleneck things do open up a bit more.

[Mister Jack]

I've been replaying Sekiro recently and I realized that ogre is much, much more manageable if you just avoid the stairs entirely and fight it strictly on the flat ground at the top. The different elevations on the stairs really screw with the hitboxes.

[TheMightyEthan]

12 hours ago, Thursday Next said:

I love Sekiro, I think the first Ogre dude you fight in the stocks is a major skill-check that is a bit unbalanced. Once you get past that bottleneck things do open up a bit more.

 

Whaddya know? That's where I quit! 

[MetalCaveman]

Waifu Uncovered

 

This went downhill fast. Played this one because I saw it on my library, though I have no recollection of when, how or why I bought it (I mean, I kinda know why, just not when lol).

 

The first couple of stages are fun, a light shmup, more in the lines of Aero Fighters or Ninja Commando than the bullet hell stuff. Then the last two stages turn into hell, not even bullet hell, just hell.

 

Upgrades are neat, and some of them are pretty cool, but they're few and far between, powerups and other pickups are similarly rare, and worst is that sometimes you'll move to pick an upgrade only to have an enemy spawn right under you, dealing a bunch of damage. Bomb pickups have a ridiculously low drop rate, specially considering that some ships can only carry one.

 

You also only get one life, whether you're playing normal or arcade modes, that's it, die once and it's game over, which is one of my biggest issues with this game.

 

The next issue is the difficulty spike, the last two stages just throw every enemy in the universe at you, if you haven't gotten the right upgrades and powerups you're toast.

 

Bosses are also lame as hell, they're all the same in terms of attack, and what's worse is that while you can only shoot forward, bosses tend to spend a fair amount of time at the bottom of the screen, away from where you can shoot.

 

Finally, the thing that really made me take several points off, Easy difficulty is locked behind paid DLC.

 

Had all stages been challenging, with the difficulty slowly ramping up, it would have been fun, that, or at least give the player more lives, that alone would also make a huge difference. Or just make it easy as hell and let players unlock the gallery, arguably the main selling point for a game like this lol.

 

Grade: F

[danielpholt]

On 1/16/2023 at 3:08 PM, Thursday Next said:

I love Sekiro, I think the first Ogre dude you fight in the stocks is a major skill-check that is a bit unbalanced. Once you get past that bottleneck things do open up a bit more.

 

Yeah that thing beat the sh*t out of me for a good hour before I figured out how to beat him. You encounter a few more of them in the late game and they're still pretty tough outs. 

[Thursday Next]

On 1/18/2023 at 7:16 PM, danielpholt said:

 

Yeah that thing beat the sh*t out of me for a good hour before I figured out how to beat him. You encounter a few more of them in the late game and they're still pretty tough outs. 

 

They are just so grabby, and Sekiro (to my recollection) doesn't really have a hard-counter for grabs (especially not that early in the game). As well as the grab being tough to dodge, and dealing a tonne of damage, and possibly tossing you off the side of a cliff, it also means fewer opportunities to do poise damage because you aren't blocking etc.

[Mister Jack]

I trivialized it by just staying at the top of the stairs and constantly dodging sideways

[TheMightyEthan]

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

 

I don't know if any of you have heard this before, but this game is actually pretty good. It took a while to hook me, which I thought was a bad sign after I bounced off the first two, but after about 10 hours it got its claws in me, and once it did I was on straight through to the end. The combat is a little clunky by modern standards, but the characters, world, and story are very well done. I see why everyone was so hyped for Cyberpunk. I made the decision to go in blind and not look up what endings were available or how to get them, and I think I made the right choice. I also managed to get an ending I'm satisfied with, even without looking. 

 

So yeah, if you like RPGs I would recommend checking this one out. I now definitely have my eye on the Witcher 1 remake, when before I had no interest.

 

Grade: A

 

Now on to Hearts of Stone, and then Blood and Wine.