Games Completed 2019

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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Scrustle »

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25/01 - Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
31/01 - Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas
01/02 - SOMA (Safe Mode)
09/02 - Shadow Warrior
18/02 - Mulaka

Not a huge amount to say on this one, but it was fun enough. It's a fairly rudimentary action adventure game inspired by Central American mythology, which has a pretty nice low poly, flat shaded art style. You mostly spend your time exploring levels to find the magic stones to open the gate to a boss, fighting smaller enemies on the way. You also get the ability to transform in to various animals that give you certain abilities that let you explore more hidden spaces, and you can go back to previous levels with these new transformations to find stuff you couldn't get the first time there. I didn't find myself wanting to return to any old levels though, except for one which is the only place you get access to the very simplistic combat upgrade tree. Combat itself is very basic with only a few simple moves, but it plays well enough to be entertaining. Some of the bosses were pretty fun too, and a couple had an impressive scale to them. Unfortunately it does seem to drop inputs sometimes, which can be very annoying when that leaves you in danger. Sometimes the transformations can be fiddly to control as well.
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Michiel K
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Michiel K »

Simonsloth wrote: February 17th, 2019, 11:04 pm Not sure if the Switch levels are any good but it seemed like just as it was starting to get going it finished:(
Sounds like you've only seen the first credit roll.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Simonsloth »

I’m intrigued. I finished the three episodes.

After that what I can see are some bonus levels from new super Mario bros which I unlocked so is there more?

Looking at a few websites it seems to list the bonus levels and mopping up the challenges
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ratsoalbion »

Yeah, no - that’s the bulk of the game then.

I’m surprised if you feel short-changed in that case, I’ve completed it on both Wii U and Switch and been surprised by the amount of content on each occasion, especially for a ‘mid-price’ title!
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Simonsloth »

ratsoalbion wrote: February 18th, 2019, 7:07 pm Yeah, no - that’s the bulk of the game then.

I’m surprised if you feel short-changed in that case, I’ve completed it on both Wii U and Switch and been surprised by the amount of content on each occasion, especially for a ‘mid-price’ title!
Not short changed as there’s a lot of game but more that my favourite levels were the final few where I felt challenged and started to really enjoy it.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ratsoalbion »

Gotcha.
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Michiel K
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Michiel K »

18-02 Street Fighter: Real Battle on Film (SAT)

A week or so ago I became thoroughly absorbed by the spectacular story behind the development of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.

After messing around with the original arcade version in MAME and having a good old laugh with it, I decided to splurge on an 11 Euro copy of the Japanese Saturn version on eBay. It felt like the right price for a simple curiosity for a life long Street Fighter fan.

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You've got to love that title of the Japanese version of the game. That's some sale. This is no longer a mere video game we're playing, it's a REAL BATTLE, captured on film!!!

For those in the know, the console version is a completely different game from its arcade counterpart. Where that game was developed by Incredible Technologies of Time Killers and Blood Storm fame, out of Chicago (as detailed in the story linked above), Capcom themselves handled the console 'ports'.

What you get is basically a version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo with a few different characters, replaced backgrounds and the iconic sprites replaced with crappy JPEGS with stilted animation. And with the body proportion differences with the original sprites, I'm sure you can imagine the effect on the game's visual clarity and hit detection logic. Other than that, it plays well, though.

The arcade version might be a bit of a joke, with a broken juggle system and nutty infinite combos aplenty, but 'objectively' it oozed production value as IT had access to the real movie sets and access to most of the actors, to capture their movement. It has much more elaborate frames of animation and even lighting that changes depending on where the characters are on the stage, not to mention some in the rough, forward thinking mechanics.

Real Battle on Film is a salvaging project after poor feedback on Street Fighter: The Movie in arcades. It's much more apparent, from frame to frame when you see the original actors and when you see a stand in, and clumsy corrections are made by the developers drawing over the digitised images. Also, the backgrounds are kind of cobbled together, though the Shadaloo base ones are actually quite nice and detailed and evoke the silly sets of the movie quite well.

I played through the arcade mode with Ken, played by Damien Chapa a.k.a. Miklo from Blood In, Blood Out, because I find it hilarious how much he doesn't look like the video game character and much more like an average Joe in a red pyjama. It was smooth sailing, until I reached Jean-Claude van Damme, who took a round off of me (typical).

Afterwards, Zangief and Bison (who in this version doesn't seem to retain a single digitised frame of Raul Julia) gave me some grief as well, with massive damaging hits and I had to hit Continue a few times.

All in all, a good laugh and it doesn't play half bad. Plus it has some decent music as well. A nice little piece for the collection.

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Combine Hunter
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Combine Hunter »

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15/02 - Resident Evil 2 (PS4)
17/02 - Final Fantasy VIII (PS Vita)
18/02 - FAR: Lone Sails (PC)

Great little 3 hour game. Art direction and music is top notch.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

Michiel K wrote: February 18th, 2019, 11:16 pm ...All in all, a good laugh and it doesn't play half bad. Plus it has some decent music as well. A nice little piece for the collection.

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I kinda want this game now! The movie is a great good-bad movie, and I love weird, bonkers games.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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I thought the Street Fighter The Movie The Game was the scrolling one, like Streets Of Rage style. There was an Angry Video Game Nerd episode on it, although I must be thinking of something else?
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Michiel K
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Michiel K »

Alex, I think you’re talking about the NES side scroller Street Fighter 2010. That was released before the movie and Street Fighter II, even.

Joshi, I’d get it in that case. You won’t break the bank over it.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Alex79 »

Ah yes, that's the one!
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Sinclair Gregstrum
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Sinclair Gregstrum »

Jan – Streets of Rage 2 - Sega Mega Drive Classics (Switch)
Jan - Detroit: Become Human - (PS4 Pro)

Feb - Quarantine Circular (Switch)

If you played Mike Bithell's Subsurface Circular (which I did last year on Switch) you'll be right at home here. While not a direct sequel in terms of characters or plot, it certainly is in terms of gameplay. This is a largely static, branching text conversation game, where you play a character placed in a scenario trying to get information out of the NPCs around you and progress the plot based on your dialogue choices. It's more interesting than I've made that sound, but that is essentially it! No character movement or other gameplay to speak of - you are literally stood around talking to people (and an alien in this case).

So really the game lives or dies based on the quality of these interactions, the characters involved, and the story that plays out between them. Subsurface got this spot on, with what I thought was a compelling narrative in an interesting setting, with nuanced choices that felt like they had weight and purpose.

Quarantine Circular sadly drops the ball a bit. Firstly instead of inhabiting just a single character as you did in the first game, you jump between multiple different ones within the narrative throughout the relatively short playtime. I found this really robs you of getting under the skin of, and roleplaying as, any one individual. I also felt like the characters themselves had been simplified and stereotyped more than in Subsurface, meaning you could quickly get an idea of their role in the narrative and understand their perspective, but with the bi-product of making them far less interesting as result. There just wasn't much nuance there, and I felt an unsatisfying tension between picking the response I would personally give vs what the developer clearly wrote the character to give. If you just went for the former and made choices based on what you would do that surely defeats the purpose as the game is reduced to a conversation between lots of different 'me's. But equally by selecting what felt like the 'right' responses you just didn't become connected to the characters or story, as they weren't really your responses. Either way it just didn't quite work!

So essentially by expanding the concept to be multi-character rather than single, they kind of broke the game a little bit. It's not bad by any stretch and I'd happily pick up another Bithell conversation-em-up if he does one, but Quarantine Circular just wasn't quite the progression of the excellent Subsurface that I was hoping for.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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January:
Tale of Tales Collection
Virginia
Gravity Rush 2
Nier Automata

Feb:
Wolfenstein 2
Prey (2006)
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
19th Feb
Super Ghouls and Ghosts

Yes! I finally did it. Very strange as it seemed to get easier as the game went on like they front loaded the game with major difficulty spikes as the last few levels were quite quick to get through. The bosses towards the end were straightforward as you could sort of hide just out of view and hit them with cheap shots from afar. I say this all with the knowledge I didn’t play the game properly as I used save states liberally. Still I did it and I’m proud.

Little credit roll video to prove it whilst I sat back in silence revelling in my ill gotten achievement

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Re: Games Completed 2019

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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Simonsloth »

Haha thanks very much. I played into the wee hours last night and made more progress than I thought possible. Today was the icing on the cake and it feels quite liberating.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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19-02 Project X Zone (3DS)

Phew! Finally done with this one! Here is what I made of it, neatly summed up for my game collection catalog:

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Incidentally, playing in short bursts to keep the game from getting tedious is also why it took me so long to get through this 60-odd hour game. That and massive gaps where I wasn't playing on handhelds.
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seansthomas
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by seansthomas »

1st February - Dark Souls
8th February - The Gardens Between
9th February - Quarantine Circular

20th February - Night in the woods

I am so confused about what to make of this one?

By the end of it, I had really grown to like the characters a great deal and some of the writing and art design of the town did a great job of capturing life in a small community as a 20 something. Playing guitar with mates, eating pizza, beginning to realise the stresses of adulthood via your parents, etc. all rang true. And the 3 or so songs you can play in this game are bloody brilliant, staying with me days afterwards and breaking up the game hugely. Will have to see if they made it into a Sound of Play I missed...

Maybe it's because 5 of the last 6 games I've completed have been indie titles where I had little to no impact on the gameplay, rather a rudimentary function to perform at set times, but I found myself just wanting it to end halfway through and pining for a shorter 3 hour experience.

Then the story went somewhere I was not expecting and I sorta dug it at the time, but now it's over I'm left with a feeling of confusion about what it was trying to achieve and if it went a bit M. Night Shamalaman.

So yeah... it had moments of replicating those slacker movies I grew up with that I adored. Equally I'm not sure how much of a game it even is for the most part. It was incredibly well written and I grew to love it's characters, but I grew tired of their company. And I took loads of screen shots of scenes I enjoyed, but found it fairly dull and laboured for the most part.

Yet, despite all that, I'd totally recommend it to someone as the things it does well, it does really well. Just think it'll likely appeal to fans of things like Stranger Things, Brick, Juno and most Wes Anderson films - and those type of things just ain't my bag...
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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Flabyo wrote: February 1st, 2019, 11:20 pm 5th Jan - Rise of the Tomb Raider (XBO)
1st Feb - Doom (2016) (XBO)
20th Feb - Crackdown 3: Campaign (XBO)

That was... ok. It’s enjoyable, but fairly directionless. The boss fights are quite weak, but the general combat is fun once you’re powered up enough to do all the moves and have all the more interesting guns.

No way I have the patience to hunt down all 1000 orbs though.

The problem I think it has is that Sunset Overdrive exists, does most of the same things, and does them all better. (Crackdown seems painfully unfunny to me at times... whereas Sunset is so daft with its plot that the terrible jokes land properly, and that’s just one aspect)
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Chopper »

seansthomas wrote: February 20th, 2019, 11:31 pm
20th February - Night in the woods

I am so confused about what to make of this one?

By the end of it, I had really grown to like the characters a great deal and some of the writing and art design of the town did a great job of capturing life in a small community as a 20 something. Playing guitar with mates, eating pizza, beginning to realise the stresses of adulthood via your parents, etc. all rang true. And the 3 or so songs you can play in this game are bloody brilliant, staying with me days afterwards and breaking up the game hugely. Will have to see if they made it into a Sound of Play I missed...

Maybe it's because 5 of the last 6 games I've completed have been indie titles where I had little to no impact on the gameplay, rather a rudimentary function to perform at set times, but I found myself just wanting it to end halfway through and pining for a shorter 3 hour experience.

Then the story went somewhere I was not expecting and I sorta dug it at the time, but now it's over I'm left with a feeling of confusion about what it was trying to achieve and if it went a bit M. Night Shamalaman.

So yeah... it had moments of replicating those slacker movies I grew up with that I adored. Equally I'm not sure how much of a game it even is for the most part. It was incredibly well written and I grew to love it's characters, but I grew tired of their company. And I took loads of screen shots of scenes I enjoyed, but found it fairly dull and laboured for the most part.

Yet, despite all that, I'd totally recommend it to someone as the things it does well, it does really well. Just think it'll likely appeal to fans of things like Stranger Things, Brick, Juno and most Wes Anderson films - and those type of things just ain't my bag...
Nice summary, I'd agree with almost all of that. Whereas I didn't particularly enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay, and was a bit disgruntled with it overall, I still find myself thinking back to the game pretty often! It had an impact on me with the characters and background/social aspects, even though I never want to see it again.
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