Games You Beat in 2023: PXoD Face the Music

[TheMightyEthan]

I do hold out hope for an eventual Steam release like with Control, because Remedy retains the rights to Alan Wake, it's not owned by Epic, and I can't imagine they would agree to store exclusivity in perpetuity for their own IP.

[Mister Jack]

Epic is the publisher for Alan Wake 2 so I wouldn't hold my breath for ever seeing it on Steam. Anyway...

 

Cultic

 

This is a retro style FPS that was made pretty much entirely by one guy. It's on the short side but you know what? He did a pretty good job. While there are only ten maps, they're all pretty big and full of secrets. Excluding the final boss, each one probably took me around 20 to 30 minutes to clear on hard mode. There's a decent enemy variety and this game clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Blood, only without the bullshit hitscan enemies that game had and thank god for that. Something that impressed me was that all the weapons not only feel good, but are also useful through the entire game, and that includes the starting pistol. I only upgraded the pistol once, but it shoots fast and makes for a pretty decent midrange sniper weapon if your aim is good. You will rarely be swimming in ammo and guns have fairly low ammo caps so you're encouraged to use every tool in your arsenal. Picking one favorite and sticking with it isn't really an option, but I didn't really mind this because, like I said, they're all fun. You also get throwables in the form of TNT bundles and molotov cocktails. Fire is crazy good in this game. Once you set someone aflame they will pretty much flail around helplessly until they burn to death and will ignite anyone they touch along the way, much like they did in Blood. Headshots are also extremely satisfying. I'm talking blood geysers here. The game does end on a cliffhanger, but there's already a chapter 2 planned. Not sure if it will be DLC or a new release, but either way this game is only 10 bucks, which is more than fair for the amount of content on offer. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Mister Jack

[toxicitizen]

59 minutes ago, Mister Jack said:

Epic is the publisher for Alan Wake 2 so I wouldn't hold my breath for ever seeing it on Steam. Anyway...

 

Yeah, I understand the publisher situation. That's why I opted to pirate the game rather than hold off until the Steam release like I did with Control and every other EGS exclusive. I'm expecting it to never come to Steam but, like Ethan said, I'm hoping that the deal Remedy has with Epic lets them eventually release it on other stores, even if it's years down the line.

Edited November 12, 2023 by toxicitizen

[Mister Jack]

All I know is the Alan Wake Remaster still isn't on Steam.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, that's why I said "eventual" release, I don't think it'll be anytime soon. But since Remedy owns the rights, not Epic, the publishing agreement probably has some kind of a time limit on it, even if it's like 10 years or whatever.

[TheMightyEthan]

On 11/10/2023 at 11:49 AM, TheMightyEthan said:

Star Wars Jedi Survivor

 

The game crashed 2 hours in and broke my save. I'm not starting over.

 

Grade: F-

 

Well, I was able to get it working eventually, so I avoided starting over, and now Star Wars Jedi Survivor properly belongs in this thread instead.

 

This game is pretty good. In some ways, particularly the combat, it's better than the original. However, I think they expanded it too much, the areas are too big, it's just overall too bloated. I started having more fun with it once I stopped exploring every single nook and cranny and just kind of explored stuff as felt natural as I moved through. So I didn't just follow the complete main path, I would go look at little side areas when I saw them on the map, that kind of thing, I just didn't make a point of exploring every single inch. When I made that change it picked up and started feeling better.

 

The combat is also improved over the original, which was pretty good to start with, though it still does the dumb "oh, I suddenly remember how to do something I should have known how to do this whole time" thing, but thankfully not nearly as often. It just feels smoother, you're less restricted at the beginning, and overall just feels better to play. That said, I did think several of the boss fights were badly designed, and ended up bumping it down to story mode for two of them, not because they were "hard", but because they felt unfair.

 

The story would have been better if I hadn't seen the big twist coming literally from the first mission. I actually had almost convinced myself I couldn't be right, because even a Star Wars story couldn't be that obvious. Well, I was right, which completely robbed the big narrative moment of any impact.

 

Also, the PC version is still a mess. I got multiple crashes per play session, which given the way it handles saves is terrible. I had to redo the final boss fight because it crashed in the middle of the end cutscene. It's just bad.

 

Overall, this game is still worth playing if you liked the original, but it's not anything amazing.

 

Grade: B-

[MetalCaveman]

Alan Wake 2

 

 

Holy cow this was a trip lol.

 

I did have some issues with gameplay, specially the inventory management, that got pretty annoying and tedious, that said, I loved everything else about this game.

 

The heavier focus on horror, the story that gives you one answer and leaves you with ten more questions, the music, the

Spoiler

OLD GODS OF ASGARD!!!

Everything was most excellent. Can't wait to see where they go from here, both in DLC and in Control 2/Alan Wake 3/whatever comes next for Remedy.

 

Grade: A+

[TheMightyEthan]

Assassin's Creed Mirage

 

This game was billed as a return to form of the pre-Origins AC games, and they nailed it. Easily the best one since before they switched to the Action RPG formula. It captures the feel of the old style of games while keeping some quality of life improvements so it doesn't feel outdated. This is exactly what I wanted. It's only about 20 hours long too.

 

Grade: A

 

Too bad it looks like they're going back to the Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla style for Red.

[TCP]

Starfield
This game just would not end. I've never seen a game have so many distractions that are just interesting enough to keep me playing. I was never wowed. I never hated it. It is the bread of games.

[TCP]

I beat a second game tonight...

 

Super Mario 3D Land

Anyways, one of my big gaming discoveries this year is that emulation is actually..... pretty great. I remember emulating NES/SNES games 20 years ago and it never felt right. But 3DS games at 3x the resolution on the Steam Deck? Pretty good!

Anyways, I started this game a few years ago when it came out. ...According to Wikipedia that was 12 years ago. Fucking hell. I liked it a lot but I recall it was a busy fall. Looks like Uncharted 3 (the second best Uncharted) and Skyrim came out just days before it, and Skyward Sword a few weeks later. So anyways, it was a pleasure to return and finally roll credits on it. I'll chip away at the special worlds too but looks like they're mostly remixes of previous levels. 3D Land shares a lot of it's DNA with Super Mario Bros 3, a game which holds a special place in my heart. The game feels like a genuine combination of 3D and 2D Mario. The powerups are a lot of fun, the level design is pretty imaginative. The world map is kind of plain but for a 3DS game I guess they had to cut corners somewhere. Still, I can't believe Nintendo has never re-released this game. 9/10

[Thursday Next]

Armoured Core 6

Beat my first playthrough of AC6 at the weekend. Started tidying up the missing logs, chests, etc. and then I'll crack on with NG+/++.

[TheMightyEthan]

Final Fantasy VII

 

Yes, I finally beat the game from 26 years ago! I'd tried it a couple of times before throughout my life, and never even made it out of Midgar, but wanting to finish it before FF7 Rebirth comes out motivated me to stick with it, and I'm glad it did. It's obviously got some old game jankiness, and some very much "guide dangit" moments, even ignoring secret bosses and weapons and stuff, but overall I'm surprised how well it held up, and how hard the story hits. I would definitely recommend giving it a shot to anyone who's interested.

 

Grade: B+ (I know this is probably unfairly low, but I never got into a JRPG until Persona 4 Golden, so I don't really have a way to judge how good it was "for the time," so this is just my current enjoyment of it)

[TheMightyEthan]

Superhot VR

 

This game more than any other has made me feel like a movie action hero. Time moves when you do, you dodge bullets and shoot mans. It's perfect. My only complaint is I wish there was more of it.

 

Grade: S

[Thursday Next]

7 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Superhot VR

 

I love that you can just throw shit at enemies, like empty weapons, feels very John Wick.

 

Pew pew click, throw gun, pick up new gun, pew pew pew... such a satisfying loop.

[TheMightyEthan]

I had heard on a podcast you can grab bullets out of the air and throw them at enemies, but if that's true I was never able to get it to work.

[Mister Jack]

Arizona Sunshine II

 

The first game came out in the early days of consumer VR and was really more like a tech demo while this is a proper game with about an 8 hour campaign. Unlike Walking Dead, which is more about survival, this is a straight up action shooter. The tone is lighthearted, ammo is plentiful, and zombie body parts explode into cartoonish gore. In fact, the gore is what really makes the gunplay so satisfying. You can blow off limbs, bits of flesh, and sometimes headshots will rip off chunks of a zombie's skull, leaving their exposed brains sticking out of the hole you just made. Shooting zombies just feels good, and since that's the whole point of the game it's definitely a good thing that they nailed that part. Some zombies are also covered with armor-like patches of infection, meaning you need to either aim at uncovered areas or sacrifice more bullets to get through it. 

 

The other big feature of the game is Buddy, the German Shepherd companion who follows you through the campaign. Put simply, he's the best. You can pet him, play fetch with him, and even put funny little hats on him. Do they do anything? Nope! But who doesn't like a dog in a hat? More practically, he can fetch items for you, open up barricaded doors, hold guns for you, and attack zombies on command. Sometimes he'll also jump on zombies who get too close to you. He saved my butt from a surprise attack more than once. The plot isn't very deep, but they clearly want you to care about Buddy and I'd say they managed to pull off that much. As a side note, you don't have to worry about protecting Buddy from zombies. He can handle himself just fine and you don't have to worry about watching your dog die every time you screw up.

 

While I do recommend the game to VR users, especially when it has cross-platform online co-op, it is a bit of a flawed gem. Clipping was fairly frequent, and while it never broke the game it certainly broke my immersion. Your gun belt is also very sensitive, and while it's nice that you will pretty much always be able to reach your gun when you need it, it can sometimes make it hard to grab objects that have fallen on the floor. You can adjust the height of the belt, but as far as I can tell you can't adjust the size of the ring. I don't know if the PSVR2's eye tracking helps with this issue. I played on the Quest 3. Lastly, you only have two inventory slots for healing items or explosives, so while you can craft bombs and grenades at crafting stations the chances are you often won't have anywhere to put them and will just be holding them in your hands until you find something to throw them at. A couple more spaces would have been nice. I still had a blast with it and plan to replay the campaign in co-op pretty soon.

[TheMightyEthan]

Sea of Solitude

 

This is a cool (and very pretty) little indie puzzle game about dealing with your own and others' demons, via the metaphor of traversing a magical ocean on a tiny motor boat. It's fun, and doesn't overstay its welcome. The emotional metaphor isn't the deepest thing in the world, but it at least doesn't feel the need to explicitly explain it to you via voiceover like so many other indie puzzle games do, so I'll take it.

 

Grade: A

[TheMightyEthan]

Thirsty Suitors

 

This is another indie game about a girl coming back to her hometown after leaving 3 years earlier, making peace with her family, her exes, etc. By fighting them. Think Scott Pilgrim, if Ramona was the main character and she had to fight the exes herself. Lots of emotional growth and working through past conflicts, etc. It's really lovely and heartfelt.

 

Grade: A+

[MetalCaveman]

Armored Core 6

 

HELL YEAH!!!!!

 

That is all.

 

OK, I lied, that's not all lol, but it does sum up my thoughts. Definitively feels like a mix between third and fourth generation in terms of movement, it's not quite as fast as 4/FA, but it's def way faster than whatever was going on in 5/VD.

 

Story and story missions also felt a lot more, not linear, since there's still some choices, but definitively more focused, For Answer had a lot more mercenary missions just "go blow stuff up" kind of thing, this time feels like every mission is contributing in some way to moving the story along.

 

Overall, I loved it, it's great to see this series return, and I hope it did well enough to get a new one without having to wait another 10 years.

 

There were however, a couple of things I wasn't a fan of, most of them minor nitpicks, the biggest one however, is the boss fights. Some of them were cool to look at, but most of them were kinda annoying, while being able to access the assembly menu in the reload screen is a huge welcome, it still doesn't change the fact that some bosses just felt almost impossible to beat without cheese builds.

 

Spoiler

Spider thing and Ibis AC were the worst IMO, Biblically Accurate Rocket Artillery was at least cool, those two were just nightmares.

 

Beyond that there's a couple of things from previous games (specially from FA) I would have liked to see:

 

1. Shoulder weapons/auxiliaries. The WHEELING03 + MUSKINGUM02 combination was one of my favourites in For Answer, really took missile boat builds to the next level.  
2. Weapon arms. Machine gun arms carried me through a couple of really hard missions in FA, would have been fun to see them return here, would also allow for heavier back weapons without needing to change the entire frame since you save some weight with these.
3. Back mounted gatling canons. Related to the above, machine gun arms + gatling canons was really fun to use, chewed through ammo like there was no tomorrow, but it was well worth it.
4. Bringing mercenaries with you. Story might not allow for this, but it was fun to be able to bring in another mercenary with you on missions in FA, choosing whether you wanted to take a smaller cut of the pay in order to bring someone who could solo enemies or  get more pay but bring in a glorified decoy was neat.
5. Company affiliation. Once again, not something the story might allow for, but it was a neat detail how you could choose to, at the start of the game, affiliate yourself with one of the companies or be a freelancer, choosing a company would give you a better starting AC but lock you to missions for that company, freelancer allowed you to work for whoever, but you started with a crappy AC.

All of that is nothing though, I still enjoyed the hell out of 6, and can't wait to (hopefully) see more soon(ish).

 

Grade: S

[TheMightyEthan]

Solar Ash

 

This game is from the makers of Hyper Light Drifter, which I couldn't get into, but I definitely did with this one. You're a high tech space lady skating through psychedelic environments fighting giant monsters to save your homeworld from a black hole. It's like Jet Set Radio x Shadow of the Colossus, and it's so good. The environments are varied and interesting, the bosses are challenging without being frustrating (mostly), the worldbuilding is cool, it's gorgeous, everything about it just comes together into a perfect whole.

 

Grade: A+

[Thursday Next]

On 12/10/2023 at 10:48 PM, MetalCaveman said:

Armored Core 6

1. Back mounted gatling canons. Related to the above, machine gun arms + gatling canons was really fun to use, chewed through ammo like there was no tomorrow, but it was well worth it.

 

Don't want to build your hopes up but... 

 

[Mister Jack]

Asgard's Wrath

 

I got this game along with its recently released sequel for free when I bought my Quest 3, so I figured I might as well give it a shot and see what I was missing out on since everyone always praises this game and yeah, the praise is justified. This game is great, not to mention lengthy. The campaign will take you about 30 to 40 hours, but if you want to 100% everything I could see someone playing this for close to 100 hours. It's just that packed. 

I didn't quite understand what kind of game this was from trailers I saw but it basically works like this. There are two modes in this game: god mode and hero mode. When playing as a god, the environments are like tiny little dioramas that you can manipulate to help your hero navigate. You can do things like repair broken structures to help your hero, solve giant sized environmental puzzles, and transform wild animals into beastmen servants. When you possess a hero, the game is basically an action rpg. 

 

The beastmen part is what really makes this game unique. After you pick up and transform an animal in god mode, the animal will help out your hero not just with combat, but also with puzzles. Each animal has its own unique ability that can affect the environment in certain ways. The turtle, for example, can block flame turrets with her shell while the owl can see hidden paths. You'll be switching between them frequently, which is easily done just by pointing at them and selecting the right animal with a button press. If they get separated from you, you can summon them to your side just by pointing at your feet. Not only that, but you can build up friendships with them by feeding them their favorite foods, keeping them healthy, and high-fiving them to celebrate after battles. Animals with high friendship will find rare items for you while you're adventuring. I grew pretty fond of all of them.

 

When you're not solving puzzles, the other half of the game is about combat, which is pretty cool. You play over several different sagas and control different heroes, all with their own unique weapons and style. While you start off with your traditional sword and bow heroine, other heroes use weapons with completely different but still fun mechanics. I can't really decide which hero was my favorite. Battles emphasize parrying quite a bit since they open up opportunities to get in a critical hit, and the location based damage is very satisfying. I lost count of how many times I literally split an enemy in half down the middle and watched them peel open like a banana. It never gets old.

 

I really only have one complaint about this game, but it's a big one. There are enemies in the game who have runic armor, which basically means you cannot hurt them at all until you get rid of it. How do you get rid of it? You parry them until their rage meter fills, at which point they'll attempt a signature attack. Parry the signature attack to stun them, then hit them to destroy the armor. Doesn't sound so bad, but some of these attacks are hard to parry and if you fail then the rage meter empties halfway and you have to build it up again. Not only that, but later enemies will have anywhere from three to five layers of runic armor, which means you won't be hurting them whatsoever until you get every last layer off.  Upgraded weapons can remove two layers in one blow, but it still drags out battles quite a bit. If you play on the easy difficulty this becomes a non-issue since the runic armor just acts like an extended health bar, but if you do that then, you know, you have to play on easy. 

 

That one glaring flaw aside, I have almost nothing negative to say about this game. By all accounts, the sequel is even better so I'm really looking forward to digging in to it.

[Mister Jack]

Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted 2

 

I was always a casual enjoyer of the FNAF franchise at best, but the first Help Wanted was an excellent VR game with remakes of the first four games in the series along with a smattering of minigames to top it off. Well, this one is all minigames. Maybe around 20 or so? I didn't think to actually count them, but it took me 8 hours to beat them all and get both endings, which seems reasonable enough. A few of the minigames are new versions of the usual gameplay of the series where you have to watch cameras and close doors and vents, only this time they're harder because unlike the first game which just remade the originals and thus playing in VR gave you an advantage over the AI, these levels are designed from the ground up for VR, meaning you'll have to do things like look outside your office occasionally to see if anyone is lurking around the corner.

 

The rest of the minigames, excluding things like the surprisingly creative shooting galleries, are typically based around performing complex tasks under the pressure of either a strict time limit or an animatronic hunting you in the background (or both). Some of these can get pretty frantic, especially on the hard mode. There are plenty of games where you have to take food orders, but putting together orders in VR while an impatient robot hovers over you so she can kill you if you get it wrong just hits different. This is one of those games that would be fun to watch other people play at a party or something. I tend to have nerves of steel but I bet it would be pretty amusing to watch a total wuss try to do arts and crafts while getting stalked in the dark.

[MetalCaveman]

On 12/12/2023 at 9:32 AM, Thursday Next said:

 

Don't want to build your hopes up but... 

 

 

Best update ever. \m/ \m/

 

Spoiler

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Sea of Stars

 

This might well be the prettiest game I've ever played. It's made in a 16-bit style, and as I understand it is very much like the Chrono games, though I've never played those so I can't say for sure. Regardless, it's extremely charming, with lovely sprite work and amazing use of color. It's definitely one of those "every frame a painting" games. The world itself is varied and interesting, both in a gameplay sense and in a world-building sense. The story goes places, and I was with it the whole way.

 

The battle system is also a lot of fun, being turn-based but with bonuses to attack or defense you can get by pressing A at the right time, which makes it a little more engaging, and an interrupt system for enemies by doing certain types of damage to them.

 

I'm not a huge JRPG fan in general, but this one really hooked me, and I'd highly recommend it.

 

Grade: A+