The Shackled Wolves - 2021 Games Completed Thread

[CitizenOfVerona]

Dogurai (NS)
Horizon Chase Turbo (NS)

Was browsing the eshop like one tends to do, saw Dogurai for around 60 cents, so I used up the equivalent in gold coins. The ultimate question is: was this worth 60 odd precious gold coins? Yeah, I guess so. It's fine, just fine. I missed one collectible so got the bad ending. Before selecting the last level it says once you select it you can't go back, but it uhhh, didn't let me go back anyways (unless I missed something). For as short as it is I didn't feel the need to do another playthrough. Maybe one day when I'm bored, like, reeeeally bored I'll do it again, but there are other games to play, books to read, pictures to draw, so I'm good for now.

One of those games to play being Horizon Chase. Sometimes I get in the mood for a racing game. I'm not a car enthusiast by any means, and I prefer my racers arcadey. I like holding the accelerate button and only letting go when I finish the race. The only shifting I want to do is from my chair to my couch. Horizon is just the ticket. It's very familiar to Top Gear on SNES, even has some returning songs. It's just a really fun game with a ton of content. The Switch says "30 hours or more". There's a World Tour campaign, Rookie campaign, Tournaments and Endurance.

The campaigns are sets of races in a certain country. Your placement, tokens collected and remaining gas determine the amount of points you get, the more points the more races and cars you unlock. There are unlock races to upgrade stats like speed, nitro, gas, handling and acceleration. Rookie campaign is more of a beginners thing where it's a fraction of the courses and no need to worry about gas. Tournament sets of 4 races like Mario Kart grand prix, divided between easy, normal and hard. Endurance has three sets, short, medium and long. Long being all 109 courses back to back. You have to place 5th or higher to qualify for the next one. By track 83 my game glitched where all the cars wouldn't move forward anymore (this was the second time it every happened to me). This also comes less than a week after my Tomb Raider 2013 playthrough got corrupted as I was almost finished. Thankfully, if you close the game from the Switch menu it'll remember your place. Also, thank fuck for suspended play and sleep mode, as I don't have the patience to sit down for 109 tracks at once.

There's also multiplayer which I didn't check out, and a DLC campaign called Summer Vibes which I will wait on. I recommend this one.

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

Creature in the Well (PS4)

I was on the fence with whether to pick it up or not. I watched a review which said it was good but had issues. I hmm'd, I haw'd, but I ended up getting it. Boy am I glad I did, I loved this one.

It's pretty short, I 100%'d this in four and a half hours-ish, and all the levels are all stitched together similarly, but I just enjoyed playing it. It's a top down action pinball game. You control your character, you can dash out of harm's way, hit energy balls or charge them up to make them more powerful. Different weapons can give different benefits like a helpful visualization of where the ball is gonna go, or an electric charge that'll make nearby objects get hit too.

Instead of fighting enemies, you have to swing these energy balls at essentially pinball bumpers. The more you hit them the more energy you collect which opens up doors and level up your character. It's an odd pairing of game mechanics but it just works. I probably didn't explain it the best, partly because I'm tired today, but it's just a fun time.

I am a bit disappointed with the ending, but no spoilers here. I did get it on sale for 10 bucks as well, I know some people wouldn't want to pay 20 for a 4 hour game.

 

[sjmartin79]

Bioshock: Infinite (NS)

I finished the third part in the Bioshock trilogy last night, and they did not save the best for last.
Before I get into my critiques, I will say that I did enjoy the game, and I'm very glad I played it.
It was nice to be in a new area instead of Rapture, but...
It was:
1) Walk down a pretty corridor while getting expositioned constantly
2) Fight in a small contained combat area
3) Repeat

The moral and political complexities of Rapture were replaced with black vs. white issues, that weren't handled that well, and become even muddier when you take the twist at the end into account.
It felt like they dumbed down the entire game.
Also, the user interface was so tiny compared to the fist two. Could have easily taken up more room on the screen. The writing on-screen in Xenoblade X was bigger.
It also seemed like none of the special mechanics truly mattered. Only once in the game did you actually need your "special" ability. The rest of the time, you could get by without them. I loved the plasmids in the first two games, but they were almost entirely unnecessary here. In the first game, plasmids were a part of the story and corruption of certain people. In this one, there wasn't much of an in-story reason to have them. Also, I disliked not being able to hold on to extra health/salts. And only being able to have two weapons, and it wasn't even your choice which two. Each weapon fit into one of two categories, and you better hope your two favorites were not in the same one.
I give them credit for the twists at the end, but I feel like the section with all the tears trying to get the ammo caused the game to lose the plot.

I hope with the recently announced 4 that they learn from the mistakes of 3 and build on the mechanics of the second game, which had fixed many issues from the first one.

Things I did love:
1) You didn't have to protect Elizabeth
2) Your arm weapon was fun, especially to shock people
3) Sliding on the sky ride areas were fun
4) The graphics were great

Of course, I could be in the minority with all these thoughts. But playing all the games one after the other gave me the chance to do a tight comparison, and this is what I came away with.

 

[TheAmazingLSB]

Astral Chain - for NSL

Ok just beat the game....

Astral Chain is about as epic as action games come....

Not only is it one of the best Platinum games I've ever played, but one of the best Nintendo Switch games out there....

I don't like rating systems, so I'll just say....

Highly recommended....

 

[sjmartin79]

Astral Chain - for NSL

Ok just beat the game....

Astral Chain is about as epic as action games come....

Not only is it one of the best Platinum games I've ever played, but one of the best Nintendo Switch games out there....

I don't like rating systems, so I'll just say....

Highly recommended....

It popped up on my switch the other evening when you were playing, and I thought "Oh, I hope he loves it as much as I did!"
Agreed that it is one of the best Platinum games I've ever played, and definitely a favorite on the Switch.
I'm glad it sold well, so hopefully we get a sequel.

 

[Shoulder]

Serious Sam 4 (PC)

I've been a big fan of the Serious Sam franchise since its inception with First Encounter in 2001 (damn, 20 years this month as a matter of fact), and with each game after the first one, the game's got better up until Serious Sam 2, which I consider to be the best game of the franchise. When Sam 3: BFE came out, it did not really get my rocks off like the previous titles, and unfortunately with Serious Sam 4, it's even less so this time around. I don't hate it by any stretch of the imagination though. It's still classic Serious Sam, but at the same time, the lack of a focused campaign that relies too heavily on cut-scenes, and pointless voice acting prevents this game from achieving greatness.

I won't lie though. Because I was so focused on just playing another Serious Sam game, I never took the time to really consider where in the "timeline" this takes place. As it turns out, Sam 4 is the genesis title for Serious Sam; something I may have heard early on, but simply forgot about it. Sam 4 is a prequel to Sam 3: BFE, which is a prequel to The First Encounter. Knowing this now, it finally makes a little bit more sense on why the last two games were more "serious" (haha) compared to its contemporaries. You see, the early games never really took themselves too seriously (sorry for another pun), so when both BFE, and Sam 4 appeared to go a more "mature," and...well, serious tone, it felt off-putting really. But at the same time, I kind of get it, although I still wished it felt more like First & Second Encounter, and less BFE.

That said, Sam 4 is still good ole fun, but don't expect anything more. Still have hordes of enemies to fight with loads of good weapons. But at the same time, the boss battles, and most of the levels feel rather dull, and boring compared to the first three games. Those of you who have played these games over the years will know how epic the final missions are in the first three games. I even think Second Encounter has one of the great shooter levels just from how batshit crazy it is, and the soundtrack fully encapsulates it (a remix of that song is played in the final level of Sam 4 before the final boss, but it's mostly a letdown I think.)

One thing I recall learning about during its development was the team wanted to have thousands of enemies on screen, and what we actually got were thousands of friendly enemy soldiers who do nothing but simply run their way through the front lines. It was seriously (there it is again) underwhelming as I expected Sam to get his dual Miniguns, and just mow down thousands of enemies on screen at once, or even have a Super Serious Minigun, or Laser that would result in the same. I think Croteam's ambitions for mowing down hordes of enemies is a bit too much for current technology, and perhaps they might be working on something that will achieve their actual vision.

Given what has transpired in playing Serious Sam 4, I now want to replay Sam 3: BFE, and then follow that up with the original three games, respectively. I want to see Croteam develop another Serious Sam title, but an actual sequel to Serious Sam 2.

Won't lie though, some of my disappoint might've come from how under-powered my rig is, so playing it at 30fps with lowest of details did distract me from the overall experience. I would love to play this again when I do eventually upgrade my computer, and see what this game truly has to offer. Maybe I'll enjoy it more?

Right now, I'll give Serious Sam 4 a Grade C for it still being classic Sam, but with too much filler, cut-scenes, and unnecessary characters (that said, I did miss Kenny. Those Bastards...). I want another Grade A Serious Sam title though. Give Me Serious Sam (which should be both a graphics setting, difficulty, and maybe the title for the next game). Just give me pure unadulterated Serious Sam. Let's get serious (last time, I promise) with an actual sequel to Serious Sam 2




...and yes. I am serious.

 

[sjmartin79]

Bastion (NS)

Bastion is the first game from SuperGiant Games, the maker of Hades.
This is a fun little mix of Zelda-rogue liteish type of thing with a 3/4ths perspective.
You can tell they took many ideas for Hades from here and perfected on them.
Graphics are good, voice acting is superb.

 

[Karkashan]

Persona 5 Strikers (NS)

Probably the loosest "Musou/Warriors" game I've played, as the general gameplay loop of "forts/army power" isn't present in this game, as it takes the general combat of Warriors and puts it into individual encounters (kinda like Okami but with way more people to beat up). The way you get into these encounters is, in many respects, lifted wholesale from Persona 5 (albeit with some minor tweaks that make it simultaneously easier and harder to stealth around enemies). This creates an experience that truly feels more like a wholesale sequel to Persona 5 than a "mere Warriors spin off".

With a hefty 30 hour run time, it's certainly beefy enough to be scrutinized more in a JRPG light rather than a Warriors-like one.

The writing in this game was, in a lot of respects, amazing. There was no goofy "reset character growth to almost zero" in this sequel, and yet they still went through enough to make me still give a shit about them (and the new characters that were incredibly well rounded being a place to bounce off of didn't hurt). The excellent English VO work helped a lot with this as well.

It's difficult to really dig too far into this game without spoilering all over the place, so I'll wrap this early and say this was a great game that I highly enjoyed.
9/10, fave game of 2021 so far.

grimabepraised

 

[Karkashan]

I am currently unable to edit the top post for some reason, so currently I can't add games to the OP.

K I figured it out. For some reason the code won't let me edit with my cool looking banner in the OP.

 

[sjmartin79]

Super Mario 3D World (NS)

I beat Bowser last night. I'm gonna do some/all of the special post-game worlds. Then I'll move over to the "Bowser's Fury" game.

I am deeply in love with Super Mario 3D World. The level designs just blew me away. I love how each level is a different idea or theme and doesn't have to relate to the specific overworld. The controls are fantastic. The graphics were beautiful. Super impressed.
Some of the levels are definitely a challenge if you want to get all 3 stars and the stamp, and I appreciate that. It's a great way to have the regular level be at a difficulty that anyone can play, but the extra challenges make it worth it for veteran players.
I played with Luigi in every level, except for the few levels that required a specific character to get a stamp. I loved the ability to do that. I honestly wish 3D mario games like Odyssey, etc. allowed that.
If you didn't play it on the Wii U, play this game. And if you did, it aged extremely well.

 

[Karkashan]

SOMA (PS4)

I saw this was dirt cheap (I think it was 3 bucks, might still be on sale idk) and grabbed it since I liked Amnesia Rebirth.

I think I played so much of Frictional Games right before Rebirth released that I was a little desensitized to their design, so it didn't scare me as much anymore. There's a chase sequence. Now comes the maze. Oh, this is that part where you are forced to go into a closed area where you already know the monster is lurking. Ah, yes, body horror. I bet the part where I'm forced to personally hurt someone innocent is coming up. And where's my old friend, horrifying implications? Ah, there he is. And so on. I love Frictional and wanted to write about all the ways that they weave various horror elements into their games, but I think I should have taken a short break before playing Rebirth, even though I did like it.

And now that I've played SOMA, I get this comment. These devs have a formula, and they can go to some incredible places with them, but even two months apart the shared structure is painfully obvious.

7/10, CopyNPaste-kun wasn't as fun a protag as Tasi.

 

[Juegos]

SOMA (PS4)

I saw this was dirt cheap (I think it was 3 bucks, might still be on sale idk) and grabbed it since I liked Amnesia Rebirth.



And now that I've played SOMA, I get this comment. These devs have a formula, and they can go to some incredible places with them, but even two months apart the shared structure is painfully obvious.

7/10, CopyNPaste-kun wasn't as fun a protag as Tasi.

Personally, I think Soma is their best game, but that is one hell of a dumb protagonist in it. Some of the time it can be justified by "truth is so scary that we choose to not believe it," but some other times it's like dude, you can't seriously go and do the thing and not know what you're getting into. Then again, maybe it works as dramatic irony since you as a player clearly know what you're about to do to your lovable doofus of a protagonist as well as all the side characters.

 

[BobSilencieux]

Burnout Paradise (NS)

I found this game on the eshop for £12... I'd say it was well worth it. Got nearly 50 hours of pretty good fun out of it, with only a smallish amount of frustration at some of the traffic and racer a.i. I was playing it for a while and thinking "man, I'm sure Need for Speed Most Wanted on the Wii U looked better than this".... then I realised it was a game from 2008, four years earlier than Most Wanted U.

 

[Juegos]

Burnout Paradise (NS)

I found this game on the eshop for £12... I'd say it was well worth it. Got nearly 50 hours of pretty good fun out of it, with only a smallish amount of frustration at some of the traffic and racer a.i. I was playing it for a while and thinking "man, I'm sure Need for Speed Most Wanted on the Wii U looked better than this".... then I realised it was a game from 2008, four years earlier than Most Wanted U.

Dude, we were doing weekly game nights of this back in July-Sep, I wish I'd thought of posting about it here because it was dirt cheap since back then.

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

Dying Light (PS4)

For some reason I don't really like committing to outright saying things like "I hate this game" and such. I'm pretty sure both Kark and ET might question that as I can be pretty salty in our Discord chat towards some games. I usually try to give a game a fair shake, maybe approach in a different way. Sometimes it's not so much the game as it is the player. Maybe it doesn't jive with the player, not their kind of game, etc. In this case though, yeah, sad to say I disliked this one. Ultimately, it was just frustrating too much of the time to fully be enjoyable despite having some good ideas.

So what's the biggest problem in this zombie action game? Well, the zombies...and the action. As you play you find better weapons and unlock skills. You start off weakly swinging around pipes and end off swinging with katanas embedded with the power of electricity and fire. Even the basic bitch zombies can be annoying, attack them and often times they'll do this drunken lunge forward swinging their arms which can immediately turn into a grab attack, even after attacking them with end game weapons. There's these running zombies that never stop being annoying. Make a noise like firing a gun, crashing through a roof, etc and they'll spawn in and chase after you. So of course the game also just has exploding zombies randomly explode up the street for no reason and wadda ya know, those running zombies will chase you because of that. They can duck and weeve too making fighting them not the most enjoyable thing.

There are some instant kill skills you can unlock, one of them being if you're higher than a zombie you can one-hit-kill them by kicking their head off. I think it's meant to be if you knock them down you can finish them, but even if you stand on a car and they’re all standing around it you can immediately kill them. So often times when there's a horde or a bunch of runners, I just go find a car to stand on or a chest high crate and kick away. Its effective but not exactly how I should want to tackle combat.

The parkour system is mostly fun even if the character randomly decides to not grab ledges and as a result fall to my death, especially when you unlock the grappling hook. And how's this for level design?: There's a fun parkour system in place, so let's put most of the story missions inside sewers or cramped buildings where there's barely any to do. Bruh.

Side missions are mostly fetch quests. "Turn on these three switches, now there's a fourth" or "go here, collect key, unlock there, whoops need another key, go there, find second key, go back, profit". And of course, the classic "go to these parts of the map and collect me 10 bear asses".

I did enjoy elements of the story but there's some plot holes and inconsistencies.

So yeah, rough time with this one. I was tempted to quit a few hours in but I figured "once I level up and find better gear it'll be smoother, so maybe now I just have to play smarter, use traps and noise makers as distractions." And after awhile it was pretty fun. I still died a lot, but once it got into that groove it was pretty alright. Did all the side quests for XP and because most of them take place in the open world so I could jump around to my heart's content. Then the second map unlocked and the game became a slog til the end, making me keep checking that "story percentage cleared" in the pause menu, just waiting for the credits. I bought the bundle with it's sequel DLC campaign The Following, but I don't think I'll be playing it. Whomp whomp.

 

[EvilTw1n]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (NS)

This game is fascinating. Not because it's good (which it is), but because, with the modest updates Grezzo did, it feels like the sort of game Square Enix has been trying to do right for years now. "SNES, but modern." SE published Bravely Default; they created a little internal studio for games like Octopath and Triangle; they funded Tokyo RPG Factory. And yet it's a damn GameBoy game, revamped though it is, that feels the most like a "modern SNES" game that I've played. Weird.

There are faults here*, principally in the framerate stuttering when zone loading, or occasionally when there's a lot of enemies onscreen. I can only guess that it's because this really does appear to be a game that began life on 3DS, and then had an HD plasti-dip applied on top. Apparently they didn't have the time to update the game engine to take full advantage of the CPU/GPU horsepower on Switch. Some of the design choices are stupidly obtuse, too. "We'll just hide the wall you need to bomb on the bottom of the screen, where the camera angle makes it super-easy to miss the wall cracks."

[*Reeeeeeeeeeally didn't need the unskippable text on rubies and boulders, either. How has this not been patched out?]

That aside? Pretty great way to spend 15 hours. Tons of heart, built atop the most solid videogame adventure template that's ever existed, starring your usually-unflappable 2D Zelda combat. The dev team also really wanted to get chibi-Link laid, so there's that.

But.

If this game fast-forwarded to the egg, instead of Eagle's Tower and Turtle Rock existing, it would be one of my favorite games of all time. Cut the run-time to 12 hours, and I'd replay this every year. I've talked with @Goodtwin and @Koenig about dungeons in Zelda, and how BotW 2 should really consider going back to some more in-depth dungeons...but I'm really reconsidering that now. Spending 45-minutes-to-an-hour just walking around aimlessly, trying to figure out a room puzzle, isn't fun for me anymore. It's a waste of my damn time.

Give me room to go on an adventure. I don't give a shit how clever a switch-throwing puzzle is. I respect why people love the old dungeon template, but put me firmly back in the "no, BotW 2 needs to double down on letting me explore"-crowd.

Link's Awakening is otherwise darn close to greatness.

 

[Karkashan]

^ It's interesting to hear your take on that @EvilTw1n , specifically on the 7th and 8th dungeons.

To me, these days, if I go back to those games those dungeons take me, at most maybe forty minutes. They're super simple to understand and they feel like the perfect length a dungeon should be.

The little girl who first played this game on a Super Game Boy with her dad over 20 years ago, however? She had problems with those two dungeons. Like I remember spending weeks making my way through those dungeons (to be fair, didn't have a lot of game time then cause my sister and I were very busy do very important, polly pocket related activities and my dad was out of town a lot then for work related stuff), and this memory of beating my head against the wall that were the 7th and 8th dungeons stuck with me. To the point that it took me probably to my 9 or 10th replay of Link's Awakening before I no longer dreaded getting to that part of the game.

So I completely get why a new player would see a giant ball and be like "...so what do I do with this?" and "Wait I was supposed to hit this crystal switch, fall through the floor onto the raised platforms, just so I could make my way back up to this floor so I could grab the ball....that I forgot to throw over the pit...."

Turtle Rock itself does feel almost like a Metroidvania in itself with how convoluted it is.

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (PS4)

I was gonna wait and lump this together with Phantom Pain when I beat that, but after trying again this morning after playing it on and off for a bit, I finally threw in the towel. I can't deal with PP anymore, and the idea of having to sink 40ish hours into it is tiring. I wanted to love it, I love stealth games like Splinter Cell and Thief, I play games like Deus Ex and Batman stealthily, I really wanted this to be what I've been missing in games in a long time, but there's just too much that annoys me.

One of the most boring open worlds I ever seen, takes forever to get anywhere and only 10 missions in and already repeating objectives. Once in a mission a relatively big area is zoned off and once you do the objective you have to leave that big area. No fast travel too, can't do side ops while in a main story even if it's in the same area (side ops are usually "rescue prisoner" or "take out this specific guard" so they're nothing major). My biggest issue is the stealth itself. Enemies are wired on coffee and crack or something because getting spotted is easy, then all bases are on alert for apparently days (in game time). When combat status goes up everyone magically knows where you're too and swarms you. There's a reflex mode if you get spotted, time slows down and you got a chance to knock out whoever spotted you, but when time is up and all they do is gasp, everyone knows where you're too immediately.

I actually like Ground Zeroes. I did the main story and all side ops. I would have preferred if PP was just multiple GZ sized maps instead of a big empty open world that's stretched out too much.

It's just all the little things that add up to make it more tedious. If it was an 8-10 hour slog I could deal with it, but 40? Nah son. Fucking shame, as this might be the last MGS we get, and stealth games are rare as hell these days. I'm legitimately super bummed about this. At least I'll always have Hitman, and there's a few indie games like Aragami and A Ghost of a Tale I should check out.

 

[Shoulder]

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (PS4)

I was gonna wait and lump this together with Phantom Pain when I beat that, but after trying again this morning after playing it on and off for a bit, I finally threw in the towel. I can't deal with PP anymore, and the idea of having to sink 40ish hours into it is tiring. I wanted to love it, I love stealth games like Splinter Cell and Thief, I play games like Deus Ex and Batman stealthily, I really wanted this to be what I've been missing in games in a long time, but there's just too much that annoys me.

One of the most boring open worlds I ever seen, takes forever to get anywhere and only 10 missions in and already repeating objectives. Once in a mission a relatively big area is zoned off and once you do the objective you have to leave that big area. No fast travel too, can't do side ops while in a main story even if it's in the same area (side ops are usually "rescue prisoner" or "take out this specific guard" so they're nothing major). My biggest issue is the stealth itself. Enemies are wired on coffee and crack or something because getting spotted is easy, then all bases are on alert for apparently days (in game time). When combat status goes up everyone magically knows where you're too and swarms you. There's a reflex mode if you get spotted, time slows down and you got a chance to knock out whoever spotted you, but when time is up and all they do is gasp, everyone knows where you're too immediately.

I actually like Ground Zeroes. I did the main story and all side ops. I would have preferred if PP was just multiple GZ sized maps instead of a big empty open world that's stretched out too much.

It's just all the little things that add up to make it more tedious. If it was an 8-10 hour slog I could deal with it, but 40? Nah son. Fucking shame, as this might be the last MGS we get, and stealth games are rare as hell these days. I'm legitimately super bummed about this. At least I'll always have Hitman, and there's a few indie games like Aragami and A Ghost of a Tale I should check out.

MGSV is still on my list of games for this year. I'm now extremely skeptical how it'll turn out though. Having enjoyed MGS1, 2, 3 & even 4, this sounds more like a departure from what we're used to, but not an evolution that you'd expect.

I'm working on Serious Sam 3: BFE right now, and have First Encounter next (I'm planning to make some videos about First Encounter, so stay tuned for that). Maybe I'll tackle some of my PS4 backlog afterwards...

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

MGSV is still on my list of games for this year. I'm now extremely skeptical how it'll turn out though. Having enjoyed MGS1, 2, 3 & even 4, this sounds more like a departure from what we're used to, but not an evolution that you'd expect.

I'm working on Serious Sam 3: BFE right now, and have First Encounter next (I'm planning to make some videos about First Encounter, so stay tuned for that). Maybe I'll tackle some of my PS4 backlog afterwards...

If you do play MGS V let me know. Maybe I’m missing something. I was pretty excited for it, even replayed 1-4 and Peace Walker a year or so ago. I’m fine with change but this didn’t click with me.

It got showered with praise upon release and lots of people seem to love it, so it could be a Splatoon or Monster Hunter scenario where I’m the only in the TNE crew who isn’t a fan.

 

[Karkashan]

The First Hour of MGSV is amazing and wacky.

The meat of it is a slog that's only held up by wrapping up the post MGS3 storylines that were continued in Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes.

 

[sjmartin79]

Bowser's Fury (NS)

After playing all the way through it and getting all 100 Shines, this is definitely a full game all by itself. It's not very long - I 100% it from Friday to Sunday. I'd say I spent 12-15 hours on it.
And it is done so exceptionally well.
I loved it. It was beautiful, fun, and challenging. The level designs were great. They were able to merge 5 unique challenges into each island section.
Getting to play as Giant Cat Mario was a blast. The Bowser boss battles weren't horribly challenging, but they were fun. A big part of the challenge was trying to continue to collect shines while Fury Bowser was attacking (if you weren't battling him).

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

Touhou Luna Nights (PC)

I feel like I owe @EvilTw1n an apology. I'm pretty sure I keep telling him the next Metroidvania I play will be Hollow Knight, then I end up playing another one like Minoria or, this time, Touhou. One day...

Touhou as a series consists of bullet hell games that make me go cross-eyed with how many projectiles are on screen. This is a spin off that turns it into a side scroller Metroidvania. It got recommended to me on Steam, was on sale so I picked it up and it turned out really fun. It's not the longest game ever, featuring five areas that are pretty self contained with no mandatory backtracking (only optional for upgrades that need some movement or attack upgrade to get). The bosses are pretty hard but all follow a pattern, so it's about memorizing what they'll do next. In some of these bosses I can see the bullet hell creep in.

Since I'm not familiar with the main series, I didn't know these characters. I'd say anyone can jump into this, which I recommend (it's available on Switch), but seems to be one of those things where if you're familiar with the source material certain twists and characters showing up would be a bigger deal. I might even check out the main series one day.

The main character is a maid who throws countless knives, can freeze time to throw a bunch in place, unfreeze time and they'll all go at once. Time manipulation is a big aspect and the game does a good job introducing new mechanics. Objects highlighted with a green aura will only move when time is stopped, yellow will move in the opposite direction, purple will always move, etc. Water becomes solid so you have to time freezing/unfreezing to get past waterfalls. It's all just really well made and put together.

Music is banging too.

And since the main character is a maid I now know what Kark gets up to when she goes to work.

 

[Shoulder]

If you do play MGS V let me know. Maybe I’m missing something. I was pretty excited for it, even replayed 1-4 and Peace Walker a year or so ago. I’m fine with change but this didn’t click with me.

It got showered with praise upon release and lots of people seem to love it, so it could be a Splatoon or Monster Hunter scenario where I’m the only in the TNE crew who isn’t a fan.

Will do. Once I've gone through Serious Sam First Encounter, I'll give it a go.

 

[Shoulder]

Serious Sam 3: BFE (PC)

I last played this about 5-6 years ago (when I did my montage video), and haven't picked it up since. Have to say, it was better the second go around compared to last time. Maybe it has to do with just focusing on playing the game versus getting some footage recorded for a pointless video? Who knows?

But anyway, I had a good time playing through this again, and the gunplay felt tighter, and more engaging compared to what I last remembered, Enemies are of course just as crazy as always, but not overly so where it's impossible to beat each level. It does strike a good balance, and even though it falls in line with First Encounter in terms of locales, the narrative does at least make sense given it's a prequel to the first game.

BFE is overall good classic fun with your usual one liners, plenty of action, hordes of enemies, and a good selection of weapons.

Onward to The First Encounter next.

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

Wandersong (PS4)

This game got heart and charm for days. You play as a bard who sings through a journey to save the world. I'm impressed with how much they squeezed out of it. You sing by rotating the right stick or d-pad and the notes are arranged in a wheel. Stand on a platform and the direction of the note dictates what direction it moves, rotate it clockwise or counter-clockwise to slow, pause or fast forward time in one level, do some rhythm game sections, and more.

The story and characters are fantastic, tons of good dialogue here, involves a lot of introspection and what you make of life.

There are times in the game where it goes full on "walk around town and talk to people to progress the story" and the puzzle-platforming sections aren't the longest, but if you want a good story with dem feels, give it a go. This is exactly what I mean when I often say how indies are where the heart is in gaming these days.

 

[Karkashan]

What Remains of Edith Finch (XB1)

Tried it out since it was on Gamepass.

Other than some slight FPS drops and pop in in the intro, the game ran very smooth for me.

It's a walking sim (perhaps the quintessential walking sim) but at the end of it all it was a story worth telling and a game worth playing.

 

[TheAmazingLSB]

DOOM (2016) - NSL

Decided to play through it again before I drop headlong into DOOM Eternal....

 

[Karkashan]

Monster Hunter Rise (NS)

After finishing the story in both the Village and the Gathering Hub I can safely mark this as "complete" despite the fact that I'm probably going to spend a hundred or more hours easily with it.

 

[BobSilencieux]

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (3DS)

Still love it after all these years.



However



In a post-BOTW world, I couldn't help but feel a little weird going back to the traditional temple template. I dunno. Given that Majora's Mask for a long long time was like 1b on my greatest of all time list (just behind Super Metroid), I think this latest playthrough has helped solidify BOTW as the actual greatest game ever made. Imo.

 

[mattavelle1]

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (3DS)

Still love it after all these years.



However



In a post-BOTW world, I couldn't help but feel a little weird going back to the traditional temple template. I dunno. Given that Majora's Mask for a long long time was like 1b on my greatest of all time list (just behind Super Metroid), I think this latest playthrough has helped solidify BOTW as the actual greatest game ever made. Imo.

I also agree with BOTW being the greatest game ever created

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

I'll chuck my two cents in.

Majora is still my favorite because Zelda, to me, is all about:
Exploration
Side Quests
Temples

BOTW is definitely top-tier, but Majora has a better mix of all three in my opinion.
Termina is great to explore with a ton of hearts and items like bottles to find.
The Masks and the quests attached to them are still some of the best side quests in gaming. The Couple's Mask quest is in a league of it's own, and even simple ones like preventing a mugging at midnight and getting the Bomb Mask is memorable. Need I bring up the alien invasion on the farm?
BotW has some great puzzles, but not gonna lie, I do wish the aesthetic changed up a bit. 120 shrines plus 4 Divine Beasts all having the same look is a bit tiring. Majora's 4 major areas are pretty good.
Throw on top of that one of my favorite stories, characters and tone, and you got a wiener of a game.

The fact I actually replayed BotW speaks volumes to how great it is, I think it's the only open world sandbox game I've replayed. I can see myself going back to it more times in the future too. Will I replayed it as much as Ocarina or Majora? Probably not, but I don't think it etches out Majora.

 

[TheAmazingLSB]

Monster Hunter Rise - NSL

 

[Karkashan]

Retro/Grade (PS3)

An interesting rhythm game that combines just a bit of the shmup aesthetic it's wrapped around in in its core gameplay. I can easily determine that it was made in the tail end of the Guitar Hero era, as not only does it support Guitar controllers but the higher difficulties are flat out built around using one.

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)

Sometimes, you just need a "comfort food" sort of game. I haven't beaten this since it launched over 7 years ago (eww), but I fired through it over the weekend. It's interesting in hind sight, being able to rent the items after the tutorial section kind of feels like how BotW gives you the items at the beginning. Being able to do the 7 Sage dungeons in any order also feels like the devs dipping their toes into a more open design.

The dungeons are great, it has that Zelda charm, forgot about how top tier Hilda is in the hierarchy of Zelda girls, and it's just plain fun to play. Loved hunting down all the heart pieces and 100 maiamais.

It also gave me pleasant memories of Triforce Heroes. Lots of good times on the 3DS, like that time I threw ET off a bridge, or when I threw him off a cliff. Who could forget the time I threw him into quick sand? Brings a tear to my eye.

 

[Karkashan]

It also gave me pleasant memories of Triforce Heroes. Lots of good times on the 3DS, like that time I threw ET off a bridge, or when I threw him off a cliff. Who could forget the time I threw him into quick sand? Brings a tear to my eye.

No one can. Those moments are immortalised on YT forever.

 

[mattavelle1]

Ghost and Goblins Resurrection (Switch)

Freakin game is badass!!! The art style I felt like was top notch, I loved how they reimagined and drew the monsters of old and brought them to a whole new pop. It gave the game tons of character and charm even in this difficult world.

Level design and difficult (I beat it on Knight next to the hardest level). I personally love the way they design levels that put you in sticky situations where at certain points you WILL die over and over again until you “figure out” that section on the level. Make no mistake tho it’s a brutally difficult game on the harder difficulties.

It did bring me a lot of nostalgia being that the OG Ghost and Goblins was one of my first games as a kid on my NES. It was great to hop back into that world that really started my love affair with Capcom and the games they create. I’ve always, and still do consider them my 2nd favorite game maker outside of Nintendo.

 

[mattavelle1]

Tetris99 (Switch)

I’m gonna consider this one beaten and the only reason why is I did get first place (I have screens to prove it) on Tetris Invictus (the hard mode you unlock once you get 1st in tetris99). And getting first on that mode took me a damn min!

For me Tetris99 is the definitive Tetris. Is controls amazing with the joycons I love the button DPad for this game. The crazy action and difficulty once getting in the top 10 is soooooooo good and so nerve racking. I continue to play with with the way the Japanese trained me on TetrisDS back when it was only 3v1 online but that’s where I learned. Tetris99 is silky smooth tho with a layer of who and when to attack. I’ve sank hundreds of hours into this one and I don’t reckon that will change anytime soon because it’s just that freakin great of a Tetris game.

 

[Karkashan]

Tetris99 (Switch)

I’m gonna consider this one beaten and the only reason why is I did get first place (I have screens to prove it) on Tetris Invictus (the hard mode you unlock once you get 1st in tetris99). And getting first on that mode took me a damn min!

For me Tetris99 is the definitive Tetris. Is controls amazing with the joycons I love the button DPad for this game. The crazy action and difficulty once getting in the top 10 is soooooooo good and so nerve racking. I continue to play with with the way the Japanese trained me on TetrisDS back when it was only 3v1 online but that’s where I learned. Tetris99 is silky smooth tho with a layer of who and when to attack. I’ve sank hundreds of hours into this one and I don’t reckon that will change anytime soon because it’s just that freakin great of a Tetris game.

I'm not adding it or any Battle Royale.

 

[Karkashan]

Five Nights at Freddy's (PC)

 

[CitizenOfVerona]

Ittle Dew (NS)

Haven't played this one since the Wii U days, so instead of going through the painful process of plugging my Wii U into the outlet and switching HDMi cords, I bought it for Switch. It's still a great little indie Zelda-esque game. One main dungeon where you explore to get money, buy an item, do a dungeon focused on that item, return to the main castle, repeat. There are shortcuts to take if you can solve harder puzzles, and you can beat the game with 2 out of 3 items, the route you'd need to take will change. Some puzzles offer multiple solutions, and some are real head scratchers. There's even an optional cave that is really hard. Part of it was I didn't know some items could be used in tandem to get certain results though.

If you're looking for a 5-6 hour top down puzzle game I recommend it. I wanted to play this again before eventually getting to the sequel, which may wait until after Nier and Resident Evil 8.