Games Completed 2019

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
Locked
User avatar
Simonsloth
Member
Posts: 1639
Joined: November 22nd, 2017, 7:17 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Simonsloth »

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

Feb:
Wolfenstein 2
Prey (2006)
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Aladdin SNES
Aladdin Mega Drive
Donkey Kong
1st March:
Donkey Kong Country

Working my way through the series from the start. It’s a pretty mean game with so many cheap shots! Think I might take a break before the sequel as I’m a bit fatigued from the side scrolling platformer genre.
GunstarBlue

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by GunstarBlue »

Resident Evil 2 Remake.

Wasn't expecting much but the game was an excellent remake. It was however an excellent game, straying far enough away from the original to keep it interesting while taking plot points and themes from the original to make it feel familiar.

I've completed the game with Leon and will go back in a few weeks to complete the game with Claire or play the three excellent story missions added as free DLC by Capcom.

I highly recommend this game to anyone that hasn't played it yet as it takes modern controls from the more recent action orientated games while maintaining a decent survival horror vibe like the originals.
User avatar
Scrustle
Member
Posts: 2426
Joined: November 18th, 2012, 6:02 pm

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Scrustle »

Spoiler: show
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
26/02 - NieR: Automata - 3C3C1D119440927 DLC
02/03 - Race Driver: GRID

This was an absolute joy to revisit. Despite them being one of my favourite genres, I almost never replay racing games. With them it usually feels like the initial run through exists as something to hone your skills and unlock all the content. Once that is done, why bother going through that again? You have everything you wanted by that point. But on a whim I decided to go back to this one, and I'm really glad I did. With how stagnant the genre has been feeling for a long while, this was an excellent shot in the arm of the kind of excitement that it feels like the genre has been missing for years.

I'm also really glad it holds up after so long too. Despite it having a flew blemishes here and there, it's still a really solid experience with great feeling mechanics. It still captures that tension is always had of feeling like your constantly right on the knife edge, despite the handling being pretty approachable. It's really stylishly presented in a way that still does the job really well and gives the game a unique mood. Despite having a pretty basic structure to the career mode, it has a great sense of progression to it, and takes you through a lot of very varies race types that are mostly very fun to drive. There's a big mix of track cars from different classes that all drive very differently, like the comparatively slow and slippy muscle cars, through touring cars, GT cars, and hyper fast and grippy LMP cars. Tracks are nice and varied too. The game shines most in the tight street courses that force you through narrow corners with little room for error. But there are also a decent amount of proper race tracks that have some nice multiple apex sections that are satisfying to properly nail. A couple of Japanese mountain roads, and even an open dockyard area also exist that work well for specific race types.

The game still also has one of the best drifting modes in any game too. This can be extremely tricky to pull off, and as such I think modes like these often get criticised for the wrong reasons. Usually I don't like these modes either, where they create a separate handling model for drifting, instead of that style of driving just simply being performed by the player in the default physics engine. The problem with these modes is that they give you very limited control over your car. Since the developers make these modes with what I guess is an assumption that the player can't hold a drift by themselves, or that the physics don't support that well enough, they simply make it so the car automatically slides any time you turn at all. But this creates this really unnatural feeling where you have to second guess exactly where the developer thinks the limit of grip should be in this weird mode, and it's never quite clear, and it's definitely not consistent between games. There's also the problem that without being able to choose whether you want to slide or not, that makes trying to correct mistakes a nightmare. You might be out of your line a little bit, or you want to get back grip to readjust, but the game won't let you. And instead you end up with the mistake snowballing in to something much bigger as you try to manage the swinging pendulum of your out of control car as it just keeps getting worse. This game seems to manage to avoid those problems somewhat. Maybe it's because I've played this game more than others with this mode, but the limit of grip feels a bit more intuitive here than in other games, and there's a better sense of when you're going too far before you just totally lose control. There is also a little bit of leeway in giving you some grip when you're not already sliding. It allows you to readjust slightly if you've messed up, instead of just making it worse.

I think perhaps the problem people have with modes like this is that they don't get familiar enough with them to understand what the developer was trying to go for, or don't have a sense of what drifting even feels like outside of modes like this and so have no reference. But when these modes are usually so inconsistent and overly punishing towards players who haven't already mastered it, I can see that point of view. In a way I think I can see the developers of this game might have even been aware of this issue. The target scores for the drift events in this game are ridiculously easy if you're even somewhat competent at them. While the game in general can be pretty challenging, I was finding myself crushing my opponents in the drift events every time. It wasn't rare for me to get triple their score, or even up to ten times as much in some events. Maybe that's an admission that they don't expect most people to get the hang of it, and will even able to score remotely as well? Somewhat strange, given how this has been probably the most intuitive version of this kind of system I've come across. And that's way more time spent on just one mode than I was expecting to, even with my enthusiasm for that style of driving. It's not exactly a huge part of the game either. Just one mode of many. It's another one of those hyper specific topics that I bet I'm the only person to put so much thought in to.

There were a couple of problems that reared their heads though. Despite most of the tracks being excellent, I think a few were pretty bad, or at least had bad parts. There were a few that felt like they just didn't have any good room to overtake, and were really miserable to race on. I know I was faster than the AI on those tracks, but at any point that it would makes sense to overtake, it was always in really awkward choke point that was just impossible to do anything with. There were also a couple of tracks that had some pretty poor sight lines, meaning that I could never get a decent feel for where the best line through a complex would even be. A couple of tracks had parts that weren't exactly bad, but didn't work well with the way the game is designed. There were some tracks that start off with a very narrow chicane, and the AI just cannot navigate them at all without causing total chaos on the first lap. It makes some races infuriating as you're restarting them like a dozen times trying to pick your way through the wreckage, and usually failing, despite trying to take it slow and steady. A lot of it is just down to luck.

I also had a few issues with the way some of the cars felt to drive. Despite the vast majority of the classes being very enjoyable, a couple were really bad and just not fun, for very strange reasons too. Some of them require an absolutely insane level of perfection to get corners right in, that is really unreasonable compared to the difficulty level of the rest of the game. On top of that, the physics system that seems to favour dramatic crashes, combined with that other problem of the AI I mentioned, makes trying to pass opponents in these cars near impossible. It produces a quirk in the physics that makes you bounce off opponents pretty drastically if you touch them, and with the AI all piling in together at the start of a race, and the absolute zero room for error these cars give you, it just makes the whole thing really unreasonable. I swear the AI cheats in these cars too. I suspect there might be a system where you bounce off opponents more than they bounce off you, to perhaps mitigate the pile-up problem. They might even be able to turn sharper than you too, given how they seem to have way more leeway to get their line wrong in these cars than the player does. One of the weird things I found was that this is a big problem in the LMP2 class, but not LMP1. Both classes being extremely similar, and should be ultra fast and grippy racing machines, with the former only being slightly slower than the latter. Yet they are totally night and day in how hard it is to drive them, and how hard the AI drivers are too.

But those issues thankfully only cropped up in a few race types, and the majority of the game was still excellent and a lot of fun. Just as good as I remember it. I was somewhat worried that might not be the case coming back to it, with it being one of those kinds of games that was special in its day for standing out when there wasn't much like it. But it turns out it wasn't just the novelty that made this game appeal back in the day. It absolutely has legs. I just wish the sequels were as good. I guess the series could still make a second comeback at some point...
User avatar
Magical_Isopod
Member
Posts: 993
Joined: May 29th, 2018, 11:57 pm
Location: London, ON, Canada

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Finally finished Metro Exodus after a busy few weeks. Definitely my GOTY frontrunner so far. Absolutely phenomenal game, even in spite of all the whiners on the Internet.
User avatar
ColinAlonso
Member
Posts: 585
Joined: September 6th, 2016, 9:13 pm
Location: Dublin

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ColinAlonso »

Spoiler: show
Jan 16 - Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4)
Jan 20 - FTL: Faster Than Light (PC) (Easy)
Jan 25 - Final Fantasy VIII (PSVita - PS1 Classic)
Jan 27 - Puzzle Bobble (Switch) (Difficulty Level 4 - One credit)
Feb 3 - Metal Slug 3 (PS4 - PS2 anthology version on Easy)
Feb 8 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (Switch)(Vs Computer mode - Normal)
Feb 12 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (Switch)(Puzzle mode - One credit)
Feb 20 - Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (3DS - DS cart)
Feb 21 - Super Smash Bros Ultimate (Switch) (World of Light)
Mar 3 - Ristar (JP version) (PC)

Or Ristar the Shooting Star as that's actually the name in the Japanese version.

I noticed that the JP rom was included in the console versions of Sega Mega Drive Classics. So I had a look on the Steam version to see if they added it to my library and lo and behold they had.

It was my first time playing the JP rom. There are no gameplay changes, just cosmetic. Very weird seeing a bunch of small changes in a game I've played so much though.
User avatar
Alex79
Member
Posts: 8423
Joined: September 2nd, 2012, 12:36 pm
Location: Walsall, UK.
Contact:

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Alex79 »

Oh that's cool, wonder if the Jap/US roms are included for other games? I'll check later, would be cool to blast through Bare Knuckle as opposed to SoR for a change!
User avatar
Chopper
Member
Posts: 1405
Joined: April 16th, 2013, 6:35 pm
Location: Ireland

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Chopper »

Subserial Network (PC)

You're a government agent in a post-human Earth where you hunt down existentially conflicted synthetics who want to return to the Machine Mother by uploading their conciousness to the Net. Weirdly, you do this by infiltrating their bulletin boards and Geocities-era web blogs.

It's pretty interesting; I didn't make sense of all the nuances, but it's a fine little fiction (3-4 hours-ish to complete). There's a lot of reading, and the main interaction is via UI panels representing email, chatrooms and a search engine. There are some really nice touches and a worthwhile game posing the 'what is consciousness?' question in an interesting manner.

Image
User avatar
Flabyo
Member
Posts: 3576
Joined: August 8th, 2013, 8:46 am
Location: Guildford

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Flabyo »

For a lot of megadrive games there isn’t a separate ROM for the different regions, it actually changes itself based on region. They did it less for later games, more space saving and even some early region locking happened.

My MD has a region selection switch on it (did it myself, and only burnt myself twice), and with Streets Of Rage 2 you can flip it on the fly and see the character names change etc... most extreme one I have for it is probably Mercs which turns into ‘wolf of the battlefield 2’ if you flip the console to Japanese.
User avatar
Scrustle
Member
Posts: 2426
Joined: November 18th, 2012, 6:02 pm

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Scrustle »

Spoiler: show
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
26/02 - NieR: Automata - 3C3C1D119440927 DLC
02/03 - Race Driver: GRID
04/03 - Bladed Fury

This is a pretty good game that is quite impressive in a lot of ways, but falls so frustratingly short of being something truly great. It's a 2D action platformer made by a Chinese developer. Something which seems to have become a of a trend these days. Much like The Vagrant which I played last year, this one is also pretty heavily inspired by Vanillaware, but sticks less closely to that exact blueprint. While it does share the same kind of fast paced and flashy combat, with fantastic hand-drawn art, this one is slightly more linear, and goes for more of its own unique visual style. The feel of controlling your character is fantastic too. It's really quick and responsive, and has a good sense of feedback. It's probably better than The Vagrant in that regard, although you don't have as many tools at your disposal. You also have a parry that you activate from blocking at the last moment, which is really satisfying to pull off.

The enemy design has a decent amount of variety to it for such a short game (about 4 hours), but they have some serious problems that stop this game reaching the heights it potentially could. Predicting incoming enemy attacks never quite feels fair. Usually the problem is that they tend to hit you faster than you expect them to, and it ends up feeling kind of unfair and cheap sometimes. On other occasions they're not animated in a way where the telegraphing gives you a good idea what the attack is actually going to be, so even if you do see it coming, you feel cheated again. That latter problem tends to happen much less than former, but it does crop up in boss fights rather a lot. The bosses are pretty good in concept. They have varied move sets and are pretty visually impressive, but I often felt frustrated fighting them because I was kind of stumbling my way through getting hit by stuff that I couldn't reasonably have predicted. Later bosses took several attempts less because I felt like they were a truly hard challenge, but more because I had a better idea of what their attack patterns were. While learning patterns should obviously part of an action game like this, here it felt like I was less learning from being observant and predictive, and more just because I was familiar with how the game was trying to unfairly catch me out.

But despite that I think the game in general isn't bad. I like watching this trend of Chinese games getting gradually more polished and being able to compete against stuff from more established countries. When fights were going my way it was still a lot of fun, and I have to admit finally beating a tough boss was pretty satisfying, despite it feeling somewhat unfair to begin with. The art is pretty fantastic too, and much like The Vagrant it's also extremely cheap.
User avatar
Chopper
Member
Posts: 1405
Joined: April 16th, 2013, 6:35 pm
Location: Ireland

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Chopper »

localhost (PC)

I liked Subserial Network enough to check out what other games Aether Interactive made, and localhost is something thematically similar. You're an administrator tasked with wiping some hard drives, which happen to host four different AIs with whom you can interact.

Image

I finished it once (in about 45 mins), but it didn't really cohere in that playthrough. I got the feeling that the individual responses should have added up to something more holistic. I may have to play through once or twice more. The issue with that is that you can't control the speed of the text, to which pauses are built in, so there's a lot of repetition.
User avatar
ColinAlonso
Member
Posts: 585
Joined: September 6th, 2016, 9:13 pm
Location: Dublin

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ColinAlonso »

Flabyo wrote: March 3rd, 2019, 7:57 pm For a lot of megadrive games there isn’t a separate ROM for the different regions, it actually changes itself based on region. They did it less for later games, more space saving and even some early region locking happened.
Just speculating, but although Ristar is a late Mega Drive game, the changes are purely cosmetic, so it may be just one ROM like you say.

Anyway, if anyone is checking their PC Mega Drive classics for other versions, there's an option on the games that have it in the room style menu. If you use the simple launcher it was just at the end of the list and named as unknown.
User avatar
Simonsloth
Member
Posts: 1639
Joined: November 22nd, 2017, 7:17 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Simonsloth »

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

Feb:
Wolfenstein 2
Prey (2006)
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Aladdin SNES
Aladdin Mega Drive
Donkey Kong

March:
Donkey King Country
4th March:
Pilotwings

What a wonderful diversion/palate cleanser. Finding myself with so many games sitting in front of me without the desire to start any of them but this was perfect.
Bakers_12

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Bakers_12 »

23/1/19 Baner Saga ios.
31/1/19 Life is Strange session 2 Episode 2
24/2/19 Marvals Spider-man
29/2/19 Mervals Spider-man The Hist DLC

3/3/19 Marvals Spider-man Turf war
User avatar
Chopper
Member
Posts: 1405
Joined: April 16th, 2013, 6:35 pm
Location: Ireland

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Chopper »

2000:1 A Space Felony (PC) - 1 hour long

Despite the terrible title, this is a cracking game. You're investigating the deaths of the ship's crew on a space mission to Saturn, and either clearing or indicting the unreliable ship's AI. You do this by taking photos of the evidence and building a case by cross referencing the photos to corroborate or disprove the ship's statements.

Really strong, simple visual design; good classical score, and the writing was excellent. I've noticed with a lot of these small indies I've been playing recently, there's a large female presence on the development teams. This one was written and programmed by women, great to see and more power to them.

Trailer is worth a look:

User avatar
duskvstweak
Member
Posts: 1123
Joined: August 23rd, 2017, 6:40 pm
Location: North Carolina
Contact:

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by duskvstweak »

Magical_Isopod wrote: March 2nd, 2019, 4:11 pm Finally finished Metro Exodus after a busy few weeks. Definitely my GOTY frontrunner so far. Absolutely phenomenal game, even in spite of all the whiners on the Internet.
I might have to wait until I update my PC for this one. I've enjoyed the series so far, but I think the new one might...frustrate my computer.
User avatar
Magical_Isopod
Member
Posts: 993
Joined: May 29th, 2018, 11:57 pm
Location: London, ON, Canada

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Magical_Isopod »

duskvstweak wrote: March 5th, 2019, 9:26 pm
Magical_Isopod wrote: March 2nd, 2019, 4:11 pm Finally finished Metro Exodus after a busy few weeks. Definitely my GOTY frontrunner so far. Absolutely phenomenal game, even in spite of all the whiners on the Internet.
I might have to wait until I update my PC for this one. I've enjoyed the series so far, but I think the new one might...frustrate my computer.
I can only speak for the PS4 version on a Pro, but running at what I suspect are medium settings with some of the crazy bells and whistles turned off, I never had any frame drops or performance issues. There were some Bethesda style bugs in the first stage, but everything after that was a marked improvement - and the last level is easily the most polished of the lot.
User avatar
Simonsloth
Member
Posts: 1639
Joined: November 22nd, 2017, 7:17 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Simonsloth »

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

Feb:
Wolfenstein 2
Prey (2006)
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Aladdin SNES
Aladdin Mega Drive
Donkey Kong

March:
Donkey King Country
Pilotwings
7th March:
Dino Crisis

Was fun to dig out my old memory card, get the last ending and be told I’ve got mad skills.
User avatar
MajorGamer
Member
Posts: 135
Joined: October 14th, 2016, 6:33 am
Location: Toronto, Canada

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by MajorGamer »

Spoiler: show
Jan 2 - War for the Overworld (PC)
Jan 13 - Pyre (PC)
Jan 16 - Heroes of Hammerwatch (PC)
Jan 17 - Mega Man 11 (Switch)
Jan 20 - ReThink | Evolved (PC)
Jan 20 - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch)
Jan 22 - Ruzar - The Life Stone (PC)
Jan 27 - After Death (PC)
Feb 6 - Vikings - Wolves of Midgard (PC)
Feb 21 - Loyalty and Blood: Viktor Origins (PC)
Feb 27 - Book of Demons (PC)

The Diablo inspiration and references are real. Your abilities and items are card based here and it costs gold to unlock more spaces for you to use them. There is enough variety to do whatever you want between that and the three characters you can play as. It does get a bit samey and I think it goes on for too long. There is just too much time where you don't get anything new.

Instead of the free-roam from Diablo, here you are on a set path that is just a line with some branches in it. This makes dodging some things very difficult or just impossible. It can lead to some cheap deaths, especially when combined with the post game. It leads to an infinite dungeon where bosses lock out your abilities (this can include those vital healing potions) as an additional difficulty. More get locked out the further you get. It got to a point where I triggered two bosses at the same time that locked out all my healing and escape options which gave no chance to survive. Fun for what it is but overstays its welcome.
User avatar
Michiel K
Moderator
Posts: 1295
Joined: October 13th, 2015, 9:37 pm

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Michiel K »

8-03 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Champions' Ballad DLC (Switch)

This started out very exciting, but around the middle part it began to feel like busywork. However, I think what also attributed to that is that I wanted to get through it at a fast pace, in time for the CaR podcast recording, so it kind of disrupted the more adventurous and relaxed pace I tended to play the game at before.
Spoiler: show
To be honest, it has some pretty great moment and some of the EX shrines are very inventive and diabolic and test your resourcefulness and mastery of the slate runes to the max. The final dungeon is pretty effin great and is concluded with a surprising and exciting boss fight. The ultimate payoff is tearing across Hyrule on your motorbike and giving Guardians and Lynels the runaround.
The best way to enjoy the DLC is to not expect much of the extra story content (it's pretty much in line with what you get in the main game) and, after you cleared the first third of it, see it as a substantial extra to sink your teeth in besides looking for standard shrines and Koroks, while you continue to enjoy exploring the land.

Speaking of which, a recent glimpse at my Hero's Path taught me that I still have so much terrain left uncovered, besides having found exactly 72 shrines and 72 Korok seeds.
User avatar
ratsoalbion
Admin
Posts: 7918
Joined: August 28th, 2012, 9:41 am
Location: Brighton, England
Contact:

Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ratsoalbion »

24 Jan: Florence (iOS)
03 Feb: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch)
03 Feb: NieR:Automata (PS4)
10 Mar: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U)
Locked