Completed Video Games 2017

[bomaye]

1) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo Switch) -45 Hours

Unlocked the Gold Glider, something I didn't do in the Wii U version (they halved the unlock amount for 10k to 5k, I was just over 3k when I finished triple-starring all the Grand Prix races. Overall MK8 is definitely a better game on the Switch than the Wii U because of the double item boxes, but I probably lost interest in the multiplayer about 1000 coins ago. Battle mode being back is cool but I quickly lost interest in it (wasn't very good at it). Mostly did my online play in races, which is fun up until you start hitting the 1000-2000 mark, then things get too srs business. Finished with 280 races, 63 1st Place finishes, 42 Seconds, 37 Thirds, and 8 rounds of battle mode with 1 each of a 1st/2nd/3rd place finishes.

[Enail]

Played Undertale, found it compelling enough to play again for a different ending, just finished the second round. Very interesting, surprisingly moving, and I think it's the kind of game that stays with you. I'd definitely recommend it.

[KMR]

On opposite ends of the time-investment spectrum: I finished Persona Q (3DS), which took 80+ hours, then played through Transistor (PC), which only took 5 hours.

I'd never played a Persona game before, and my brother was watching Let's Plays of Persona 5 and thinking it'd be up my alley, but since I don't play big consoles anymore, I recommended he get me whatever Persona game was on the DS for my birthday. Turned out that Persona Q isn't a traditional Persona game, but rather a cross between a Persona game and an Etrian Odyssey game, with EO gameplay but using Persona characters and theming. Since I love the Etrian Odyssey series, this game was a great find, and I got to get a bit of a glimpse into what the Persona games are like too, so that was pretty cool.

Transistor was a great experience. I wasn't a big fan of the combat system (although the skill system had a lot of neat ideas) but the game was short enough that it didn't bother me too much. The main focus of the game, however, was on the narrative/atmospheric/emotional experience and it absolutely delivered.

[bomaye]

2) Splatoon 2 (Switch) 40ish hours

100%ed single player. 30ish levels including boss-levels, a secret map in non-boss levels and on each world-screen, a secret wrench in every level, and then beat every level a total of 9 times, once each for each type of weapon. Probablyyyyyy wasn't worth it, but I did it anyways <_<

Compared to Splatoon 1, it's maybe more like an expansion pack? The two games are a ton alike, just Splatoon 2 has more of everything (especially in single player, being able to use every weapon in it was cool), though 2 did remove some of my favourite super-weapons from the multiplayer mode and replaced them with weaker/nerfed weapons that don't quite have the same effect.

[bomaye]

3) Ultra Street Fighter 2

Technically I've probably beaten it like 40-50 times <_<

I beat it on Normal with every character and watched their endings, beat the Buddy Battle a few times and beat the game a few more times with a few characters to unlock titles. Each character has about 5 titles to unlock (Beat the Game, Beat Akuma, Beat Buddy Battle, Win a Round of every fight with a Super Move, Win a Round of Every fight without taking damage). I'm gonna see how many titles I can unlock without driving myself nuts doing it.

4) Sonic Mania (Switch)

This game doesn't fuck around, both as an homage-type Sonic game to the Genesis (perfectly replicates the style), and how hard I found it. I think only Sonic 1 gave me this kind of difficulty. Was annoyingly hard (and in some ways, continues to be with unlocking things). Some of those levels and new stuff added in were cool as fuck though. Did it on a Sonic and Tails playthrough, might beat it again on a Knuckles playthrough

[bomaye]

5) Fast RMX (Switch)

Sort of like F-Zero. Technically I beat it because I unlocked the end credits, but that was just one mode on on the easiest setting (and even then, I only placed top 3 in every cup, didn't #1 them all). Fun early on, but the rubber-banding in this game even in the later stages of easy-mode is awful, really feels like the AI is straight up cheating to maintain its position (and #1 and #2 usually pull about a quarter of the track ahead with no real way to catch up unless you race perfectly as far as I know). Might play Time Attack/Time Trials a little bit more.

[nearly_takuan]

This is making me want to go ahead and buy a Switch now even though money's not the most available at present. And, of all things, a Sanic game for it.

My partner recently unlocked every single kart component and every "sticker" on the Wii U MK8. And she has at least a one-star gold trophy in all twelve 200cc cups.

I held off on getting Stukov as a commander in StarCraft 2 co-op, but he was included in the SC Remastered release, so now I have all the commanders and they're all level 15.

In a similar vein, my Marvel Puzzle Quest roster is currently missing Classic Doc Ock, Netflix Daredevil, Civil War Steve, Old Man Logan, Bag-Man, and various one-stars who weren't Juggernaut or Yelena. That's it. All two and three star characters are Champions except for the new Netflix Elektra, and all four star characters are available if not necessarily good. Very excited for Lockjaw coming out soon, but I really hope a yellow Reed Richards cover will show up somehow by next week...

I caught 'em all in Pokemon Moon, but then a friend of mine who was trying to do the same lost his 3DS with Pokemon inside. He just wanted the destination anyway, while I favor the journey... So I gave him my cartridge, he bought me Pokemon Sun, and then I caught them all again.

[bomaye]

Destroyed the shit out of Mario Odyssey. 70 hours, collected everything, bought every costume, found every Moon, maxed out the Moon total, and then maxed out the coin total. To the max.

Mario 64 is probably going to get the eternal nostalgia goggles as the best 3D Mario game ever, but Odyssey is the real GOAT 3D Mario game. So much to fucking find, cosplaying, MUSIC. Like I fucking want more, now.

[bomaye]

I "beat" Zelda Breath of the Wild (Switch) in that I got to the end credits. I was doing pretty good with completing sidequests and that kind of business but then I was sort of falling into my regular trap where I try to go completionist before completing the game and getting aggravated by it rather than enjoying the game and then doing completion stuff afterwards, so I skipped most of my fourth area's quests, didn't explore large sections of the map, and just beat the game. Ended up with 200 someodd Korok Seeds (apparently there's hundreds more), almost 90 Shrines (100ish in the game from what I've heard).

This is an amazing game if you love exploring vast landscapes and have a low attention span. Multiple times in the game I would say myself "to the next area!" and then I'd find a Korok Seed and "Oh what's that over there" and then my Shrine sensor would beep and then next thing I know I'd look at a clock and it was 5 hours later and I was somehow going the opposite direction of the way I meant to. The story was pretty cool too, it's a very melancholy game with a sense of regret and tragedy to it.

Things I didn't like was the material gathering and cooking because I generally don't like crafting or cooking systems in games in general (I really miss the old school "enemies drop hearts), and I found the bosses to be disappointing. I was much more scared shitless whenever I'd run into a mini-boss in the game because those actually played into the larger world rather than just some segmented dungeon area, and I felt like a conquering warrior whenever I put down a mini-boss (there are still mini-bosses where if I happen to see them on the map, I go "Oh fuck me" because I know they're going to wipe out my food stores with all the healing I'm going to have to do) whereas a boss just felt like a thing I had to do to get further into the game's main story.

Also picked up a PS4 and the Uncharted collection. Beat Uncharted 1: Drake's Fortune the other night and popped a bunch of trophies on it.

I mostly had fun with the game. It's sort of Indiana Jones meets Tomb Raider, which is funny because the Tomb Raider reboot heavily copied Uncharted's formula and was the better for it. I did play the Tomb Raider reboot before getting to Uncharted, so I sort of had to keep myself in check with the quibbles I had with Uncharted (wasn't always sure what the game wanted me to do, the path-finding and directional controls were a little so-so, I accidentally killed myself the first time someone threw a grenade at me because I ran into the grenade expecting to be able to throw it back and then go blown up because you can't do that in the game ).

There was a point in the game where the story sort of lost me, and I was kind of surprised that I had never heard of this before considering how old these games are but the

Spoiler:

Psychologically speaking, this game was also kind of goofy especially compared to how shockingly realistic (for a video game at least) Tomb Raider handled things (spoilers for both ahead)

Spoiler:

Actually I think I just hyped myself on replaying the Tomb Raider reboot, and there's a definitive edition for PS4... but I'm also way interested in seeing how Uncharted refined the formula too

[bomaye]

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS4)

What a badass game. They improved on or got rid of most of Uncharted 1's flaws and then went nuts with adding fun as fuck levels, awesome battles

Spoiler:

and a really good story. Chloe was a great cast-addition and added that a certain something that was missing from Uncharted 1. Even the...

Spoiler:

which I'm still not a big fan of felt a lot better. They even poked fun at Nathan Drake basically being a mass murderer but never really acknowledging it.

Even popped the Platinum Trophy for it, which wasn't expecting to try to do but each of the trophies were achieveable enough that I managed to pull them off.

[bomaye]

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS4)

What a terrible sequel. Excepting a few character moments and maybe one or two stunts, this game changed everything that made the previous game great for the worse. That's not even my usual penchant for overexaggeration, maybe the only element that survived for the better is the graphics, and they're not that much better than 2's if they are at all. The story is edgy and a bit grimdark instead of dumb fun, the characters aren't written as wittily as the last agme, the gun combat was completely changed for the worse (taking cover isn't as sticky, so you'll press the cover button, not take cover, attempt to get closer to the wall, cover button again, roll or stick on the wrong side, etc), Quick-Time Events made a comeback for the worst (especially in extended hand-to-hand combat), climbing is looser so you make more avoidable mistakes, the levels aren't as inventive (there's an okay horse-riding one, I guess), they added a lot of aggravating chase scenes where one false move and you're dead, a lot of Assassin's Creed-style "walking slowly while someone talks to you."

If I wasn't for the fact that I knew there was a 4th game that this plays into, I probably wouldn't have finished it

[bomaye]

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Wii U)

This is a nice little game. They took mini-stages from Mario 3D World and made them into an entire game. You walk/run (can't jump) around little 3D stages as Captain Toad from Mario and collect stars, gemstones and do little secret challenges. Reminds me a lot of Donkey Kong '94 on the Game Boy, it's not super-hard but I found myself saying "just one more level" quite a bit. I beat almost every level, collected every gemstone, and finished almost every secret challenge, the only exception is the 50 floor final level (I got 30 floors in and died and didn't want to start from 1 so that was that).

Took me about 12 hours all together. I thought it was interesting that Captain Toad was included in Mario Odyssey but Captain Toad stages weren't included like in 3D World, so that makes me wonder if a port or a sequel is making its way to the Switch eventually.

Also as a side-note, my sister got INDIGNANT when she found out I hadn't played Captain Toad yet and basically told me it was what I was playing next. Also my dad saw her playing it one day and said "Is he wearing a diaper?" and my sister was like "NO, THEY'RE HIS TOAD SHORTS!" and then went on google and typed in "does Toad" and one of the first auto-complete options was "wear a diaper"

[bomaye]

Ico HD (Playstation 3

This was a pretty interesting game. It's like the patron saint of indie games, except it's first-party and probably big-budget for the PS2 era

Gameplay-wise, it hasn't aged well.

- Doesn't control great, though strangely enough I felt a lot of Uncharted while playing it.
- The cameras suuuucks, it's a roving camera that you can swivel but it doesn't keep you centered on-screen so you can actually move around without you being on-screen at all.
- Combat also sucks. I was actually going to replay the game to pop two or maybe three more PS3 trophies but I got into one little fight and my mom got scared and just didn't want to bother anymore.
- Though I mentioned combat and platforming, the game primarily revolves around two elements, one of which is solving puzzles a la Zelda. You flip switches and mess with the landscape of a castle to continue forward. A good number of the puzzles were obtuse and reminded me of the pre-internet days when you'd get stuck in a game and without owning a guide or a magazine, end up wandering around for hours trying to figure out what to do and it ends up just being some out-of-the-way thing that you missed because the camera wasn't oriented right.

However, there is one gameplay element that ended up working in the end.

- I mentioned two elements, the other element is shepherding around a girl named Yorda. You have a kind of "follow" button where you can call her to you or grab onto her hand and pull her behind you or pull her up ledges or out-of-shadow-monster-portals. Every once in awhile you have to leave her behind to go solve puzzles that open the way, and more than a few times, shadow monsters would spawn after you solved the puzzle and she's farther away. It would lead to a kind of low-key anxiety, where is she/is she safe? It was actually somewhat annoying, but there's a story part that made it worthwhile/where the "art" sort of came in

Story-wise, I liked the design of the castle and how things look (the main character is a distinctly asian boy, which is strange for a Japanese game), and I somewhat like the minimalist story script but I think I would've removed even more of it and just let people fill in the what's going on themselves. The style almost made me think Dark Souls in a way.

There's one specific story-beat where everything came together and made it worth playing though

Spoiler:

Wouldn't play again, but it did get me with the one game mechanic and I'm not sure it would've worked just watching a Let's Play

Have some Castle in the Mist



The opening bit reminded me a lot of Silent Hill 1's theme, which is an amazing video game theme too



Though maybe not as good as Silent Hill 2's theme



That's enough of the rabbit hole for now

[bomaye]

Shadow of the Colossus HD (PS3)

Another interesting game with some age and flaws showing, though there's a PS4 Remaster incoming that might address some of the flaws.

Gameplay:

- Controls were still a problem. I try to keep these games in historical context to pass off some of the flaws (for instance, there's no Waypoints, which was a primary thing that made me decide not to go after a collection Trophy), but I think even considering the era and that Zelda OoT was the era preceding it, there was really no excuse.
- I think they got a little bit excited by the "grip strength" thing in Metal Gear Solid 2 and stamina stuff and wondered "what can we do with this?" and the answer should've been "Nothing, just make the platforming easy."
- Some of the Colossus battles were really fun (air ones especially, and I enjoyed the cleverness of being chased by the Lion through a destructible city), and these felt really awesome when you finally take one of them down.
- Some of the Colossus battles were not fun (I didn't like the last boss, and some of the ones that involve maneuvering a Colossus into the right position) and it didn't feel satisfying taking them down.

Story/Setting

I loved the minimalist storytelling again and the general look and atmosphere of the setting was good. I did have another of those "art" moments late in the game

Spoiler:

The ending had a nice touch that probably connected it to Ico that I appreciated. And generally it was a win-some, lose-some ending that I thought played pretty well.

Was aight. I'm not sure I'd play the Remaster even with fixed controls. Will be interested in seeing how The Last Guardian stacks up to Ico/SotC and if they play into each other at all, but I'm not expecting a lot (TLG was stuck in development hell for so long and this studio seems to be bad at video game controls) whenever I end up getting the game.

[bomaye]

God of War HD (PS3)

Testosterone, the game.

I had some per-conceived notions from what I'd already heard about the game beforehand. It was supposedly weak on story and sort of baby's first hack'n'slash, like an easy version of Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden for baka gaijin with no skills.

Most of the pre-conceived notions turned out to be false or only half-true. The story is a little simple and I think gamer reviewers at the time were looking for 2deep4u games, but it's really well done for a Greek myth inspired violent revenge tale. If it's a male, you probably kill it in a violent a bloody way, if it's female, offchance you have sex with it (and pop a Trophy for it) but you're probably going to kill it in a violent and bloody way too.

Gameplay can be played as baby's first hack'n'slash, but there's a lot more combos and powers available if you want to do it (and the game rewards you when you use more of them, so there is incentive to get better at it). It's really satisfying to kill monsters in brutal ways with quick-time events too.

There were a few things I found aggravating about it, there's one-hit kill death-traps and one-hit kill moves from a certain class of enemy (Gorgons) that I wasn't too fond of, there's high-beam tight-rope-walking type stuff that didn't really add anything to the game, and the last boss was just straight up bullshit (you're stripped of all the powers and abilities you'd used throughout the game, your health is tug-of-war style where he gains health when you lose it and vice-versa, and the window of opportunity to hit him is small and half the time by the time you see it, the window's already passed).

Shit was pretty cool, def jazzed to play the other game in the various collections, but it did put me in a weird place with the PS4 God of War coming out, because the PS4 one is very different from these original games.

[Orca]

Don't see a similar thread for 2018...

[bomaye]

Nor 2019

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