Re: Completed Games Rest-of-2019+2020

[bomaye]

26) Contra (Arcade) on PS4

I didn't even know there was arcade versions of Contra. I managed to beat this one legitimately without save states. Gunplay felt a bit stiff, like you would have to adjust your aim and then shoot and that lead to some cheap deaths. Was kind of surprised at how short it was even for an arcade game.

27) Super Contra (Arcade) on PS4

I did use save states on this one, mostly because on the first run I got through the first two levels relatively unscathed. Weapons were better but I still didn't like how it handled. Also I never liked the top-down sections in Contra III and I definitely wasn't a fan of them here.

28) Contra (NES) on PS4

Saved stated the shit out of this one. The shooting doesn't feel as good as the arcade but everything else does. They definitely tweaked it from the arcade version to make it fairer on the player, a lot more of my deaths when I played it without save states felt like my fault instead of the game setting me up.

29) Japanese Contra (NES) on PS4

Oh man. Better graphics, slightly harder gameplay, cutscenes, a map screen. All around a better version, I wonder why they cut all this stuff (acks I can guess why they cut the blizzard graphics from the snow level, it's hard to keep track of enemy shots while it's going on, but damn, the rest)

30) Super C (NES) on PS4

Fast-paced as fuck. Some of the other games I think I could beat without save states if I plugged in the time, this one's probably a no-go. I appreciated the extra stages added on from the arcade version, and that the top-down levels were generally easier because of the lack of power on the NES, but the last stage would be a bitch without Spread-Shot and Save States.

31) Operation C (GB) on PS4

Impressive as fuck for what it is, how wasn't here like three of these on the Game Boy? Jumping was too touchy though

32)Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES) on PS4

Still cool as fuck. Shorter than I remember, some bits are easier than I remember too (I have a lot better time controlling the top-down segments). I save-stated again, when I was a kid I could consistently get to the alien heart, with couch co-op we could usually get to the gargoyle. Still had three more bosses to go after that that I'd never seen before, but one was a remake of Super Contra's boss.

33) Super Probotector (SNES) on PS4

Sure, I'll beat Contra III again for a trophy

[bomaye]

34) Probotector (Mega Drive) on PS4
35) Contra Hard Corps (Genesis/Contra Anniversary 100%) on PS4

You can tell they took a lot of cues from Gunstar Heroes on this one. I liked the multiple paths/storylines and all the environmental action going on and loved the early '90s Japanese cyberpunk aesthetic. I think the mini-bosses and bosses had way too much Health especially in comparison to Contra III, bit too much of a Gunstar Heroes thing. Save stated the shit out of this one too, I don't know if I could beat this one without them.

Overall that's a badass collection of games. Might come back to these ones at a later date and try to beat a few of them legit (or at least with extra life codes).

[bomaye]

Ended up beating Contra III legit. Feels good to wipe out a game I couldn't beat as a child

[KMR]

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Yay for another Ori game! This one was pretty much more of the stuff that made the first game great, plus a few little add-ons and slightly longer. I 100%-ed this one without too much trouble.

These games are so well-done and absolutely gorgeous. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy, then make me sad, then warm and fuzzy again. The only issue was that since the sequel isn't any more difficult than the first, and since I got good enough to beat the first one, this game didn't challenge me very much. But the exploration, finding all the secrets, and following the story was still plenty of fun, regardless. I think this game might have improved the responsiveness of some of the abilities that were tricky to aim in the first one, so that might have also been a big part of what made the platforming easier.

[bomaye]

36) TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled on PS3

Really bad remake. The new 3D style's movement is too stiff, adding more directions to attack makes it harder to hit enemies, enemies seem to have an easier time hitting you, the bosses take forever to beat because they gave them a lot more invincibility animations and patterns where they can't take damage, the sound and music was never really going to measure up to my memories of the SNES version. Making the remake of the Arcade version instead of the SNES version seemed a bit of a waste, the SNES had so much extra shit in it. The sucked out the fun of the game and now it's just a game.

This also breaks my 23-game Platinum streak (which itself is a bit of lie because I went back and re-played a few games I didn't finish before), there's a trophy where you have to beat the game on normal mode with one life and it's not nearly fun enough or even fair enough to go for that. Kinda relieving because I was starting to not play games that I couldn't 100% <_<

[bomaye]

37) Xenoblade Definitive on Switch

What a good fucking game. Some of those landscapes are still just beautiful as fuck.

One of my favourite things about is like the first 99% of the game is really well-built, the setting and world make sense, it's still anime weird but you can wrap it up in a nice neat bow, and then in like the last little bit, "NAH MAN, WE GOIN XENOGEARS" and it's completely unnecessary but goddamn if it isn't great

The little add-on isn't what I wanted it to be (I wanted more Xeno-weirdness) but I guess in a way it's satisfying because it focuses more on a character who gets a little left behind story-wise in the original game.

I didn't 100% the achievement list, there's still 10 to do and I only beat the easiest superboss, but I've been playing this on and off too long to want to keep grinding it out atm. I did finish the Collectopedia, the reconstruction, beat all the quests, got all the Heart-to-Hearts

[bomaye]

38) Mario All-Stars Super Mario Bros 1 from SNES on Switch Online

Beat both the normal game and the second quest. Physics and gameplay was just every so slightly off from the NES original, Mario felt just a slight bit heavier or there was more input lag programmed into the game somehow so he slid a bit more and dropped a bit faster. World 8-2 and 8-3 kicked my ass when I could mostly make it through pretty easy on the NES. Howevs it did have an in-game save option so I could justify not using save states and it counts as beating it legitimately

[bomaye]

39) Mario All-Stars Super Mario Bros Lost Levels from SNES on Switch Online

YO. This right here ranks right beside my Yakuza Kiwami Platinum as the "holy fucking shit how did I do that" of me being a gamer.

The SNES version is super forgiving so game overs just put you at the beginning of the level instead of like in Mario 1 SNES (beginning of the world) or the NES (restart from scratch I think). I did beat the extra World 9 but not gonna bother too much with the bonus worlds, it's already way too much bullshit and I'm only on the first level of it.

[bomaye]

40) Mario All-Stars Super Mario Bros 2 from SNES on Switch Online

And with that, I've beaten some form of every major/mainline Mario game now

This game's always been a little too slidey for my liking

[bomaye]

41) Donkey Kong Country from SNES on Switch Online

101%ed

I still don't like the water levels and two of the later levels where the lights turn on and off, but it's definitely 16-bit platforming classic and one of my favs on the SNES

[bomaye]

42) Mario 64 from Mario 3D All Stars on Switch/100%

WHEW.

That game hasn't aged too great. Too may modern QOL things missing (bumping off of walls instead of sliding down them made me mad as shit, didn't like how exiting a course took you to the beginning of the castle so it incentivized dying to restart a level which was dumb, having game overs feels really obsolete looking back). I never used to notice the camera back in the day because I was used to it and 64 was my first 3D platformer, but really noticed how bad it was this time around, the camera and Mario's herky-jerky movements (especially when trying to move the opposite direction, half the time he'll swing around in a circle and walk you off an edge that he doesn't automatically grab onto like a modern game) killed me way more than the game itself did. I absolutely effing HATE how Mario slides down a maniac on any small incline.

All that nerd-ass bitching aside, the game set-up is classic, the characters and enemies are classic and I had a pretty fun run-through once I readjusted.

[bomaye]

43) Mario Sunshine from Mario 3D All Stars on Switch/100%

Hard as fuck but not as hard as I remember. Twitchy as fuck but not as twitchy as I remember. TBH the way I remember Mario 64 is mostly how this game actually played out. Insane physics, badass trick jumps you can do, was fun as shit fucking around with it. I even loved the Blue coin collectathon because it gave an excuse to fuck around in huge levels. Even the ridiculously hard levels I remember (Pachinko Machine, Sand Bird, Lily Pad run etc etc) weren't as difficult. Good time.

[bomaye]

44) Mario Galaxy from Mario 3D All Stars on Switch/100%

Easy as fuck, still really fun, music is amazing.

I'm not a fan of the Purple Coin levels and the game kind of wore out its welcome with me when I was 40 stars into the second playthrough. It probably wasn't worth doing the second playthrough but since I'd 100%ed the other two I figured I should cap this one off too

[bomaye]

45) Mario All-Stars Super Mario Bros 3 on Switch SNES Online

I don't like this game as a full game. World's 7 and 8 are designed around doling out cheap deaths and the game is much more keyed to using suits to make it through levels rather than having the suits accentuate your unpowered skills like in Mario 1. I guess it feels more balanced if you skip levels and use warp whistles and the like but I played through and beat every level and definitely started hating it near the end.

[bomaye]

46) Fire Emblem: Awakening on 3DS

Beat the game, all the bonus teams and all the bonus and spot-pass missions. Definitely a special game, you can easily see why it saved the franchise. Easy to understand mechanics, good characters, story wasn't anything special but it didn't need to be, and the future-children aspect of it was pretty cool.

[bomaye]

- Genshin Impact for PS4

Didn't number it because games-as-service means it'll have more content eventually (acks sounds like the next major area is going to drop in December just before Christmas). As of this point, I'm only missing one World Quest (the prereq is tied to a specific random daily quest popping so I can't do it until the game randomly decides I can), and three Trophies (Ascend A Character and Weapon for the sixth time, which are both at 0.1% on PSN/0.03% completion on PSProfiles because it takes so long to grind for, and 400 Chests in Monstadt, which I'm about 45 off and I'm waiting for weekly bounty missions until I can unlock a recipe for a treasure-chest tracker to bother doing that one). I've done every other Archon/Story/World Quest and Banner event, collected all the Anemo and Geo things, beat all the bosses at least once and at this point the only things I can do are daily quests, weekly bounties and farming for Ascension/Talent materials and in-game Achievements, which I'm not really gonna go hard on because my PS4 started ticking and had to rebuild itself a few days ago soooo since it might die soon I want to get in a few more games if I can just in case

It's a mash-up of a Tales-of game and quite literally Breath of the Wild, I don't know how Nintendo didn't sue them for so blatantly stealing the entire game. The gameplay is addictive as fuck just BOTW is, I'd easily go "Oh hey, what's that" and then spend a few hours going in the opposite direction of the quest I was meaning to do. The Free-to-play mechanics don't seem to hold you back as much as people say F2P games do (you only use it to gamble for weapons and characters, it doesn't seem like it chokes you off though I have hit the point where Mora is hard to accumulate), I like the story and lore of it, and some of my enjoyment probably came from having extreme luck, I popped three five-star characters really early and I think I have around 15 characters all together, so I had a lot of gameplay variety and a good party to tackle the game really early on.

[bomaye]

47) Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition on PS4 (Platinum/100%)

Platinum'ed the main game, 100%ed the Frozen Wilds Trophy list and beat it on New Game+ on Ultra Hard to 100% the extra trophy list.

I think this is a 7.5/10 game, in that once in awhile it plays like an 8+ and most of the time it's down around a 6. The characters and plot were pretty so-so, very stock and Mary Sue, but the background story and how that unfolds is really good and the attention to detail in the costumes and culture was fantastic. The game is fun to play, I think I hit 90ish hours and it didn't feel like I'd played that much, and I generally liked open-world complete-a-thons and this was no different from those. I think this game even for its time made some open-world rookie mistakes that not even just the previous generation of games solved, but the previous generation of Sony first-party games mostly solved. Mass Effect 1 style inventory system (don't know what you need so you keep as much as you can, but you can't carry one of everything, and it also doesn't tell you what you don't need anymore because you might need it again because you can't carry everything ) instead of something better, an emphasis on stealth but unless you're fighting the super-easy enemies, it's mostly useless because you can't do enough damage before tipping off the enemy group or herd, Melee combat is bad and only lightly upgradeable with the expansion, Uncharted-style climbing and pathfindig in a game where Infamous/Assassins Creed style climbing would suit it more (tbh I really noticed it just coming off of Genshin, which lets you climb anything, and then there's this, where you might not even be able to a clear a ridge that Aloy is taller than). I played it on the Normal difficulty because I did want to 100% the list and that meant an Ultra-Hard playthrough, but it probably would've been a funner game to play on the easiest difficulty.

Taking away the things that annoyed me about the game, Frozen Wilds is a 10/10 expansion. "Oh, you really liked our video game. Here's new mechanics, some minor fixes to the system, and a big area of more of this video game to do something in." Couldn't really ask for more. Sony has a pretty great expansion pipeline from the looks and sounds of things.

Kind of like the first Last of Us game, I'm not as enthused to play the upcoming sequel as I probably would've been just based on hype and reputation before, but we'll see.

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