Super Games You Beat in 2024 Turbo Thread: Arcade Edition

[toxicitizen]

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty/2.0 Update

 

I think the highest compliment I can pay to this expansion is that it got me to sink another 100+ hours into this game that, as it turned out, I mostly remembered pretty well. Which was kinda surprising because if you were to ask me about plot specifics for any given game 6 months after I played it, I feel like I wouldn't really remember it all that well. I guess Cyberpunk was just really memorable for me.

 

Like, I don't just mean the main quest line. Even random small gigs, I'd go to the map marker, enter whatever area it led me to and go "Oh right, this one!". I can seriously count on one hand the amount of quests I didn't remember and I'm pretty sure those were ones that I just didn't encounter in my first playthrough for some reason.

 

Early on in this playthrough I realized that Cyberpunk might be my new favorite game of all time and over 100 hours later at the end of this run I think I still feel that way. I'm actually looking forward to doing another playthrough at some point in the future to try a melee/Sandevistan build.

 

Anyway, people keep saying that Cyberpunk is good now but as far as I'm concerned it was always good. At least on PC. It's just way more polished now. I'm really glad that the big rework I had been expecting for the past 3 years finally came and ended up solving most of the game's big issues. And that it was accompanied by an incredible expansion was just the cherry on top. I do have some complaints about Phantom Liberty but most of them amount to minor nitpicks. Mostly about how isolated it feels from the rest of the game.

 

The main quest in Phantom Liberty is really good. Arguably even better than the base game's. They did a pretty good job of justifying V going on this long, spy-themed tangent but it still felt detached from the rest of the game in a way that kinda bugged me a little. I guess I was hoping for something that would expand the base game's main quest and correct some of its flaws rather than just attach an extra limb to it. That being said, I never would've thought that an expansion to Cyberpunk would be able to top "Oh also Keanu Reeves is in the game!" but having Idris Elba play Solomon Reed was basically as close as you can get to doing exactly that. He was pretty damn great as Solomon Reed.

 

I did the new ending and man, what a bummer lol. I mean, none of the endings for the base game were particularly happy or satisfying but this one just hit differently. Especially since there's no mission or anything, you just make the call and then it's just a bunch of dialogue until the credits roll. So thanks, Cyberpunk, for starting my 2024 on a downer lol.

 

I'm also definitely bummed out that we'll only be getting a single expansion for the game but I imagine it ended up being bigger than either of the two would've been. I'm really curious to know what the original plan was, though...

 

I'm also really looking forward to finding out more about the sequel. Will it still be set in Night City? Is it going to be a completely new thing or will it still involve V and Johnny somehow? I just need to know! I don't expect we'll hear anything for a long while, though, since I think there's like two Witcher games that have to come out first...

 

Oh yeah and I finally got those damn two achievements I missed out on in my first playthrough!

 

 

The one for maxing out a skill is kind of annoying since they go up to 60 now but I was already most of the way there with Headhunter. So I just had to grind a little bit. So V turned into a complete psychopath in her last few days in Night City and starting murdering every street gang she ran into and leaving nothing but corpses whenever she took a job to retrieve a laptop or some shit because she needed the experience points.

 

Edited January 1 by toxicitizen

[TheMightyEthan]

Not a bad way to start the new year.

[TheMightyEthan]

The Entropy Centre

 

First game of 2024 for me! It's pretty good too, probably the best Portal-alike I've ever played (besides the actual Portal games). You've got a gun that can rewind time on whatever object you're pointing at, and you have to navigate puzzles and this decaying facility (I did say it was a Portal-alike). The dialog is well-done and funny, the premise/story is neat, the puzzles are engaging, it's got the whole package. The only real knock against it is that the "official" puzzles keep coming back periodically even after you've broken out into other areas, and it felt weird. I get why they did it, they didn't want to copy that Portal formula too much, but every time I came back to one of them it was just inherently less interesting than the more naturalistic areas.

 

All in all though good game, would recommend.

 

Grade: B+

[Thursday Next]

AC6

 

Got the platinum on this one today. Absolute banger of a game. Loved the development of the story over the multiple play-throughs. Some minor annoyances, like not tracking on the level replay what collectibles you are missing, and some utterly opaque requirements to "S-Rank" levels, but those are minor quality of life things rather than huge fundamental issues with the game. Hope we see more AC games soon as this was my first and I loved it!

 

Up next... MWIII.

[Mister Jack]

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name

 

There's not a whole lot to say. It's more Yakuza (although I guess I need to start calling it Like a Dragon now). It's a shorter game than the others, which is why it only cost 50, but it bridges the gap between Yakuza 6 and 7. If you like the series, you'll like this. If you don't, this one won't change your mind. One nice QoL improvement, however, is that random battles no longer require load times. If enemies see you on the street, the fight will start pretty much instantly with no need for a transition screen. That really helps to speed things up, which I appreciate. Aside from that, you get the Like a Dragon experience you'd expect. There's a gripping story, tons of side content and minigames, a delightful mix of drama and goofiness, and all the bone-crunching brawling you could ask for. It's definitely not accessible to newcomers, though. If you haven't played pretty much all the previous games in the series, don't bother. Now bring on Infinite Wealth. My body is ready.

[Mister Jack]

Assassin's Creed Nexus

 

I've been playing this off and on for the past couple months. It only takes about 15 hours to beat if you don't worry about the side stuff but I've just been busy/distracted by other games. If anything, this game manages to prove that the formula can work in VR. You can do pretty much everything you'd expect to be able to do in an Assassin's Creed game, and most of it works pretty well. Unsheathing your hidden blade by flicking your wrist is always a fun bit of immersion, and being able to throw your melee weapon directly into the face of a charging guard always feels badass. Obviously, the game is of a smaller scale than a traditional AC title, but the maps are still decently sized in each chapter and you have plenty of tools at your disposal to approach a situation in a multitude of ways. I only have two gripes to speak of. Firstly, the climbing can be a little finicky. The climbing part itself is fine, but pulling yourself up onto a ledge or jumping to a distant handhold doesn't always register the way it should, which can mean falling back down if you don't catch yourself in time. It mostly works, but the climbing in Asgard's Wrath 2 still felt a lot more responsive and tight. Speaking of Asgard's Wrath 2, the swordfighting in this game can't even begin to compare. It works fine, nothing is broken, but it's pretty slow paced like most VR swordfighting games are, giving you pretty wide windows to block and parry for the sake of not overwhelming the player. It may help to mitigate frustration, but it feels more like a rhythm game than a true sword battle. If anything, it feels a little too easy for a game that is supposed to be emphasizing stealth over brute force. The actual assassination mechanics are a lot more fun and feel more natural, though. As VR games go, I'd say this is still one of the better ones, maybe on the lower end of a top 10 list or just barely outside of it.

[MetalCaveman]

Onechanbara Z2: Chaos

 

A hefty change from previous entries, the gameplay has been revamped and improved a fair bit, though with some issues.

 

The biggest change is that the level up system is gone, instead, you buy skills, rings, items and upgrade weapons, using yellow orbs, which used to be the EXP that you used to level up. Weapon variety is cool, and the descriptions are fun, there's one that's a reference to the God of War series, one that says "this is a failed weapon, but its designer refuses to admit to it", it's neat. Further, you can upgrade weapons and buy skills during each chapter, by using the goddess statues found in each area. The downside is that now character HP is fixed, for the most part, you can buy items that temporarily increase HP and there's a ring that does the same, however, you can only get each ring once, so you have to choose which character gets the extra HP.

 

Another issue with this system is that, while buying items is straightforward, open store, select item, select amount, buy, done, weapons and skills work by allocating points into each, which confused me at first since I thought you'd have to finish the game before being able to upgrade stuff, turns out, you have to select a weapon/skill and then use the d-pad to allocate points into it until unlocked.

 

Another big change, you can now call in the other characters to fight alongside you, and, unlike previous entries, which allowed you to bring only two characters, now you can bring four, which means you can bring the entire cast and have everyone fighting at the same time. This is pretty cool and makes some arena and boss fights much more manageable, the downside being that the other characters will basically use the exact same attacks you use, except for skills, so when using a skill the rest of them just stand there doing nothing.

 

Enemies are also much more aggressive this time, you actually have to combine attacks, skills, and dodges in order to clear each area. Bosses are also more aggressive and require some (admittedly extremely simple) QTEs in order to defeat them.

 

In terms of story... It's a thing lol, technically this is a sequel to Z Kagura, which never got an English release, had to go on youtube and watch a translated playthrough there lol, biggest thing is that now there's another duo, vampire sisters Sayaa and Kagura, and that zombies now come from another dimension lol.

 

The two new characters are really fun, Kagura is loud, arrogant, jumping into action before even looking or thinking about what's in front of her, constantly trying to pick a fight with Aya and Saki, meanwhile Sayaa is pretty much the only one with common sense of the group lol, unfortunately she's also a bit shy, so as much as she tries to think of how best to approach a situation, in between trying stop everyone from trying to kill each other, she rarely succeeds. Both characters are voiced in JP by Miyuki Sawashiro (Mordred in the Fate series) and she flexes her range with Kagura being loud, arrogant and throwing random English phrases here and there while Sayaa is quiet, meek, with a more cutesy voice tone. Pretty cool stuff.

 

All in all, a neat improvement over the previous entries. Fun characters, silly, cheesy story, cool music, most excellent character designs , good stuff all around.

 

Grade: A+

[TCP]

Metroid Dread

So I started playing this game at launch, got maybe half way through and just sort of... forgot about it. But after playing (and mostly liking) Prime, and wanting a game I could play portably without a huge focus on story so my wife and I can watch TV at night, I thought I'd give Dread another take. I started a new save and dived back in.

This game fucking slaps. It's everything I want out of a Metroid. Samus' movement is great and gets better throughout the game, through both unlocking new abilities, and you the player mastering those new abilities. 

There's a lot of quality of life enhancements too that the Prime Remaster was lacking, like auto save outside boss rooms that make retrying the bosses much less frustrating. Which is good because the bosses are tough in this game. But honestly, it's kind of fun learning their patterns and retrying, progressing a bit further each time. 

I think I prefer the exploration in Prime. The secrets were harder to find. The environments were more engrossing due to being 3D. Both styles of Metroid games have their advantages. Bring on Prime 4 this year.

Grade: A+

 

[MetalCaveman]

Taboo Trial

 

This is a rogue... lite? Like? Rogue adjacent? Which is the one where when you die you lose everything you got that run but also get a currency to buy permanent upgrades?

 

Point is, each run is different, after clearing a stage you can get a buff for that run, defeating bosses gives you items that can be used to buy permanent upgrades for your character, and buffs for your next run, you also get items which can be given to other characters in the main hub to allow you to play as those characters, although the change is purely cosmetic.

 

The Viking mythology meets sci-fi shenanigans thing is pretty neat, though enemy designs are pretty basic and don't change much throughout the game (other than they'll be red in Muspelheim, white in Niflheim and stuff like that) they still look cool, best design by far though, is Mimir, that whole stage is pretty cool, though really short too.

 

A cool thing is that, while all playable characters are female, you don't play as a Valkyrie, instead, you're one of the Einherjar. The "twist" at the end and how it connects to the gameplay aspect of doing multiple runs was cool too.

 

The run where I finally managed to clear the game was fun, basically got lucky enough to get buffs and skills that made my character essentially immortal, damage reduction, turn damage into HP, restore HP with each kill, etc. After being wiped out in the first stage a couple of times, it was fun to make it to the last boss without worrying about HP.

 

I did have some issues with performance and translations though, it would sometimes spike GPU usage to 100%, had to manually restrict FPS in order to keep things under control. In terms of translations, some descriptions don't make sense and some skills are referred to by different names, sometimes it doesn't make much difference, like unlocking Mjolnir and then getting a buff for Hammer of Thor, other times it can be a bit confusing, unlock skill Illusory Stranger but get a buff for Mysterious Illusion and stuff like that.

 

Overall, a fun game, def see myself going back to try more runs, though I doubt I'll be as lucky as my last one.

 

Grade: A

[TCP]

Metroid Zero Mission

A nice, short, Metroid game. Great pace to it too, you're constantly finding upgrades. The section where you play as Samus without her armour and weapons is pretty cool, I wish they had expanded on it.

Anyways, onwards to Samus Returns!

Grade: A

[Thursday Next]

MWIII

Solid Call of Duty fare. The open combat missions, where you are able to navigate an open area, find weapons and equipment on-site and tackle objectives in your chosen order is a nice innovation feels like a sort of PvE Warzone, the rest is the usual tightly executed shooty-bang gameplay you would expect.

 

Full disclosure, for those who don't know/forgot I still work for ABK, so take that into account before making any purchase decisions.  

 

AC:Mirage next.

[TheMightyEthan]

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

 

This is a really excellent metroidvania. Combat feels great, the level design is great, the abilities are fun and cool, useful in both combat and traversal, it's got everything. It's also got a memory system where if there's like a door you can't open yet or whatever you just hit down on the dpad and it pins a screenshot to your map so you can see what the obstacle was later when you get more abilities. It all comes together into an overall package that just feels really good and satisfying. I have a couple of really minor nitpicks, but the only one even worth mentioning is that I wish there were more fast travel points, sometimes they're unreasonably far apart which can make late game stuff a little tedious. Other than that, it's all good stuff.

 

Grade: A

[MetalCaveman]

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

 

A fun RTS, on a bigger scale than any other RTS I've played lol, seriously, some of these armies are ridiculous.

 

Story is kinda fun, wish they expanded more on the thing that

Spoiler

Haalee was trying to fight, whatever it is, sounds like it could be alien?

 

Also that thing with

Spoiler

the Mars dude that builds a star destroyer and jumps to some other system.

 

Lots of questions lol.

 

Gameplay wise, for someone used to StarCraft, it took me a bit to get used to the way economy works here*, but once you get into the rhythm of things and learn some of the shortcuts, it was way easier to start building armies and clearing missions. Main issue is that some missions felt way too hard, you start with a tiny base, and have to, somehow, build enough defenses and upgrades to deal with a giant enemy army with high tier units that's rapidly approaching your base, at least Easy difficulty starts you with a bunch of units, not too many, but enough to handle the early stages without a panic attack.

 

*It's easier, because you don't need to have workers gathering stuff, but you do need to balance capturing and holding resource points and moving forward with the mission.

 

A minor nitpick though, and I get why, but some units take way too long to build. Yay! I got a juggernaut, it will be active for about five seconds before the rest of my army finishes dealing with the enemy nexus! On one of the campaigns, you had an ability that sped up build times, that was useful, wish all factions had something like that.

 

Grade: A

[toxicitizen]

Horizon: Zero Dawn - Complete Edition

 

Since they announced that Forbidden West is coming out for PC this year, I figured it was time I got around to playing this one. I had tried it back when the port first came out and bounced off of it after a few hours, partially because it didn't run great on my old PC. I almost bounced off of it again this time but I pushed through hoping I was just still feeling the Cyberpunk withdrawal. Turns out this game just takes a little while to get interesting.

 

The gameplay is fairly standard/generic open-world stuff and I think that's what turned me off initially. But once I started exploring ruins and uncovering the mystery of Aloy's origin and why the world is the way it is I started really getting into it. The combat being more of a hunting kinda deal rather than just generic shooting/melee combat was also pretty good but, again, it took me a little while to really get into it.

 

My favorite aspect of the game has to be the art direction, though. I've gotten into collecting art books the last few years but this is the first game where I was so impressed with the art direction that it actually made me look up whether there was an art book available.

 

Other than that, my only real complaint is that the climbing/platforming was shockingly janky. I stopped counting the amount of times Aloy fell to her death because she wouldn't snap onto the next foothoold properly. The lack of polish in that area was surprising coming from a first-party PlayStation game.

 

So yeah, it took a little while to click but once it did I really enjoyed it. Definitely going to get Forbidden West once it comes out on PC. I also need to do a new game plus run on ultra hard at some point for the last few achievements. I probably have enough time to rush through it before P3R comes out but I was kind of hoping to squeeze something else in-between. Or maybe I'll just go back to playing nothing but Street Fighter 6 for the next couple weeks. That sounds pretty good, actually...

[MetalCaveman]

The Typing of the Dead: Overkill

 

House of the Dead, but you type words to kill zombies.

 

This is also the silliest, cheesiest the HotD series has ever been lol, they went full Tarantino with the presentation. It also probably has the record for most uses of the word "fuck" (and all it's variations) in any game ever lol.

 

Custom dictionaries are fun too, there's even one that's basically a cheat, as it replaces all word with X (dictionary aptly called, Press X To Not Die lol), I played with an Iron Maiden one, with word frequency at 50%, the game does warn you that this is not the best in terms of narrative, but it is quite fun.

 

Grade: A+

[MetalCaveman]

Bullet Girls Phantasia

 

Senran Kagura meets EDF.

 

You fight against hordes of orcs, slimes and dragons using a variety of guns (some characters have swords, but why use them when gun do job good ). There's also clothes damage, a changing room and... Intensive drilling, which is a thing lol, this game takes the fanservice from SK and turns it to 11 lol. There's multiple outfits choices and while all of them are obviously fanservice oriented, they also have different armour stats, not a concern for normal difficulty, but something you'll want to keep an eye on for higher difficulties, were enemies do a ton more damage.

 

Gameplay is a bit janky, specially when it comes to how the game handles auto aim/aim assist, which can be a bit annoying at times. The way dodging works can also be annoying, since, trying to aim after dodging makes your character take this aiming stance where you can't move, and that's sort of the opposite thing you want if you're in a situation where dodging becomes necessary.

 

Even so, it's a fun game, there's plenty of weapon variety, missions are on the short side so you can play for a bit and then do other stuff, characters are funny and varied, the story was also pretty fun, among the sea of this type of "people transported to a fantasy land" stories, this one stands out for moving away from the grimdark, and just embracing the silliness lol, specially with how characters, instead of gaining some OP magic ability, bring their guns with them, "oh that's a cool sword you have there, here, let me introduce you to my boomstick!"

 

The

Spoiler

time travel

twist was unexpected, and while a little too convenient, it fits with the rest of the story and its tone, so no big deal there.

 

Grade: A+

[TCP]

Metroid: Samus Returns

The original Metroid II holds a special place in my heart. It was the first game I ever beat. My memory is foggy since it's been almost 30 years but I played it all throughout grade 3 when I was just an 8 year old TCP. There was no map and every location looked the same. What I was suppose to do next was never clear especially as a kid. I'm pretty sure I sequence breaked at one point because I definitely sank through a bunch of acid and got to an area before I was suppose to. At some point I killed all the metroids and took on the final boss, then, with the baby I got to the surface. My point is, it was a perfect game to just wander around in for the entire school year since you lucked into getting to the end. 

I think this was always going to be a difficult game to remake because by it's tedious by it's very nature. I think MercuryStream did a good attempt at it. Ultimately I think there could have, and should have, been more variety in the types of metroids because by the end it feels like you're repeating the same boss battles over and over. Either that or just have the majority of metroids in each area be the basic metroids and have the challenge be in finding them.

Obviously my memory is foggy but none of the areas felt familiar. Some of the enemies were straight out of Return of Samus which was cool but there was a lot of gameplay based on the aeion abilities which were obviously not a thing on the Game Boy version. So a very loose remake which is understandable.

The depth of the backgrounds look cool and I bet it would have looked cool in 3D. It looks good playing at 2x resolution on the Steam Deck via Citra. It sets a lot of groundwork for what would later be seen in Dread and honestly I think I would have liked it more if I played Samus Returns before Dread. It's a fine Metroid game but the weakest of all the ones I've played recently (Prime, Dread, and Zero Mission).

I'll be moving onto Super Metroid in a bit but I'm waiting for a new piece of hardware to arrive to do 8 and 16 bit games on so for the moment maybe I'll try Prime 2.

 

Grade: B-

[Mister Jack]

What kinda hardware are you playing it on?

[TheMightyEthan]

How does Citra handle the two screens on Steam Deck?

[toxicitizen]

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - Master Collection Version

 

I decided to play this over the week-end kind of on a whim because I needed something to distract me from impulse buying Tekken 8. I don't need another fighting game in my rotation right now, especially not with Persona 3 Reload coming out in less than a week.

 

Anyway, I actually played the Tanker chapter a couple months back, right after I played MGS1, so I only had the Plant chapter left to play. I may have mentioned it back then but MGS2 is so much easier to slip back into. I never had any issues with the fixed camera angles and it just controls incredibly well overall, so I didn't struggle like I did with MGS1. Almost couldn't tell it was my first playthrough in over a decade. I'm sure some would find it dated by modern standards but for me this was one of those rare cases where the game was actually every bit as great as I remembered it to be. The story, in particular, has aged so well because of how prescient it was. Back then it was speculating about the future but now it's just describing the present lol.

 

I'm kinda glad I held off on playing the meat of the game since that meant there's now a mod out that fixes the internal resolution. I was able to run it at 1440p without any issues. There's even some experimental support for ultrawide, which is a really cool option to have, but I ultimately decided to play the game on my 16:9 monitor because the ulrawide mod broke too much stuff during cutscenes. Seemed to work pretty well during gameplay, though.

 

I'm so glad to finally have a version of these games on Steam. I've wanted to replay MGS2 and 3 in particular for quite a few years at this point, so it's great to finally have a version I can play whenever I want without having to dust off an old system. And thanks to modding, they're already the definitive versions and will only improve with time.

 

I'll probably jump straight into MGS3 tonight. I went through MGS2 fairly quickly, so I should have plenty of time to finish it by friday.

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm playing FF7R and made the same decision with the ultrawide mod for that game on Steam Deck (using it for 16:10 support instead, but same idea), cause it broke cutscenes and stuff in a way that was distracting.

[toxicitizen]

17 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I'm playing FF7R and made the same decision with the ultrawide mod for that game on Steam Deck (using it for 16:10 support instead, but same idea), cause it broke cutscenes and stuff in a way that was distracting.

 

Stupid real-time cutscenes and their stupid inability to handle just a little bit more rendering off to the sides of the frame!

Edited January 31 by toxicitizen

[TCP]

On 1/28/2024 at 5:21 PM, Mister Jack said:

What kinda hardware are you playing it on?

 

Steam Deck!

 

On 1/28/2024 at 5:27 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

How does Citra handle the two screens on Steam Deck?

 

There's a few different layout options, including stacking the screens on top of each other in the same screen, having one big one small, side by side, etc. I prefer going full screen, on the Steam Deck if you use Emudeck R5 will swap screens.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Super Mario Wonder. I'd started to get bored of the 2D Marios so had thought of skipping this one but had a 25% pre-order code so would never have got it that cheap again. I've been playing it sporadically since launch cos I can only enjoy one or two levels at a time as every now and again I'd just get one I'd be really bad at. I really did think the wonder seeds brought new life back to the series and would recommend the game to others, but having completed the story I had no desire to go back and finish the levels I hadn't found yet.

[TCP]

Super Metroid

Yeah, I somehow have never finished Super Metroid. I've started it a bunch, but I've never gotten that far for one reason or another. This great shame ended today. It's a game rich in atmosphere and ~vibes~. I liked it more than Samus Returns/Return of Samus and more than Zero Mission. The controls kind of.... sucked. Maybe that was one of my issues in the past with it. But especially coming from the other games, this game felt very differently. Fortunately I used the Redux patch which, among a few other things, modernized the controls making the game a much more comfortable experience to play.

Score: A+

Edited February 5 by TCP