Games Completed 2018

[dezm0nd]

Happy New Year!

Let's go again! I'll start with

Jan 1: Duke 3D + expansions (Xbox One)

[mikeleddy83]

Happy new year too! Sure, I'm in.

Jan - Mega man 3
Jan - Mega man 4
Jan - Mega man 5
Jan - Mega man 6
Jan - Mega man 7
Jan - Mega man 8
Jan - Mega man 9
Jan - Mega man 10

[Michiel K]

1 Jan - Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite Story Mode

You know, with voice actors that cared and a lot more varied scenarios, this really could have been something.

[Flabyo]

Everything I read about MvC:I suggests it was done on a tiny budget. Which suits Capcom (who are not that cash rich these days) but doesn't really suit Marvel who probably wanted something more akin to the amount of content Warner put into Injustice 2.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the game itself (pro players seem to mostly love it) but it feels a bit empty. Not to the extent SFV was when it launched, but it's symptomatic of the same approach Capcom took there.

[Michiel K]

For sure. At its core, it's a great fighter though, even forward-thinking in its mechanics in a way that only the "anime" fighters seem to be these days, as 2D fighting games go.

[Chopper]

The Invisible Hours (PSVR)

A murder has taken place in Nikola Tesla's (!) mansion, and you need to identify the killer among the seven guests, each of whom seems to be hiding a secret. To do this, you can rewind and fast forward time, and follow each of the guests individually around the mansion to expose their actions and machinations. It is quite similar to Tacoma in that regard. As you follow each guest and watch their interactions, the plot thickens. You don't have any direct effect on the gameplay, rather the scenes play out with you as an invisible observer.

It's really well done. In the end, the murderer is satisfactorily unmasked, but the game kind of peters out after that and the ending isn't really flagged as a hard stop, meaning you're left with a 'what should I be doing now?' type feeling.

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot. There was a lot of skill involved in keeping all 7-10 characters engaged in various simultaneous actions so that it never got boring, and the (pretty hokey) story was well delivered. The VR aspect was understated, another game where I'm not sure whether it adds anything, though being in the thick of it added something, no doubt.

[Bakers_12]

Happy new year

2/1 Battlefront 2 single player
2/1 Battlefront 2 Resurrection

As a single player experience it my look good but it’s story and game play is so so , but in some ways is a stealth tutorial for the online game Which it does well.

[Stanshall]

Jan 2nd - What Remains of Edith Finch.

I found that beautiful, uplifting and very engaging. I didn't expect to see the whole thing in one session but I was intrigued by what the next surprise might be. A really delightful game.

[Alex79]

Happy new year too! Sure, I'm in.

Jan - Mega man 3
Jan - Mega man 4
Jan - Mega man 5
Jan - Mega man 6
Jan - Mega man 7
Jan - Mega man 8
Jan - Mega man 9
Jan - Mega man 10

You did 8 Mega man games in one day!? Jesus...

[AndrewBrown]

02/01: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past [SNES Classic]

Twenty minutes shy of finishing it on the first as I wanted to... ah well. Started at 7:50 pm, 100% finished twenty minutes after midnight... not quite a speed run, but I'm happy with being able to do that from memory for a game I play only once every few years.

One thing that seemed especially pronounced to me on this playthrough was how open the dungeons feel. Maybe they really aren't that open and I'm just used to more recent Zelda titles where you enter a dungeon and there's *exactly one thing* you can do in each dungeon, which leads to exactly one more thing, and so on and the puzzle is figuring out what that one specific thing is. In A Link to the Past, I often found myself with multiple avenues to explore, many of them optional, some of them red herrings, and others opened-ended and choose-your-own-adventure. Desert Palace, Skull Woods, and Misery Mire in particular gave this impression. In Skull Woods, it's practically a matter of finding out what you *don't* need to do. If my memory of the dungeon had been stronger, I could probably have blown through the whole thing in less than five minutes, skipping most of the rooms.

With reports that Nintendo wants to continue pursuing the openness of Breath of the Wild, and if we ever see a traditional Zelda dungeon again in one of them, I wonder if we'll see a return to this "mini-sandbox in a giant-sandbox" approach.

[Beck]

Jan - Tekken 7 - I'm really enjoying my time with this and would be up for some PS4 vs

[James]

3rd Jan - Hidden Folks (Android)

Kicking off the year by finishing off a few games I started last year. First to be completed is Hidden Folks, a great pixel hunt game in the style of Where's Wally? (Where's Waldo? in North America, I believe. Maybe elsewhere too?) Lots of character in the presentation, and a great, whimsical sense of humour to uncovering Folk up to all sorts, in a range of different settings from ski slopes to factory floors.

A lovely way to spend a few hours on a tablet (or a phone, or a PC.)

[mikeleddy83]

Happy new year too! Sure, I'm in.

Jan - Mega man 3
Jan - Mega man 4
Jan - Mega man 5
Jan - Mega man 6
Jan - Mega man 7
Jan - Mega man 8
Jan - Mega man 9
Jan - Mega man 10

You did 8 Mega man games in one day!? Jesus...

I hope "no comment" works here. I actually did 10 in 10 days but missed my window to add them to the 2017 list. No need to worry though as I'll be lucky to reach half the number of games in previous years with the addition of a little one.

I will try though

[Hunter30]

January - Jade Empire: Special Edition (PC)

Showing its age a bit, and button-mashing was often the easy way to victory, but a cracking story and overall an enjoyable experience that exceeded my expectations.

[Chopper]

Actual Sunshine (PC)

That was pretty quick, 83 mins played and it is very cheap on Steam today if anyone fancies playing it for the podcast.

It's left me shaken and confused, not sure I'll be contributing anything to that episode

[Scrustle]

04/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Been meaning to play through this one again for a while, and finally got around to it after picking up the PC version on sale. Still an absolutely fantastic game. Still only played this on normal difficulty though. Next time I'll probably knock it up to hard mode, especially now I've got all the health and energy upgrades unlocked.

[AndrewBrown]

02/01: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past [SNES Classic]

04/01: Oxenfree [Switch]

I'm really not sure why I don't pounce on these styles of games as soon as they get released, because I always enjoy them. I characterized it to a friend as "Everybody's Gone To The Rapture without being so needlessly obtuse," which is perhaps a bit unfair to Rapture but oh well. Rapture would be an utterly mystifying and impenetrable artifact as anything but a videogame, but I could easily see Oxenfree adapted into a film or a graphic novel. It's basically the videogame form of a novella: A longish narrative piece that can be easily consumed in one evening, but you've really got to sit down and commit to it if you're going to pull it off. I also particularly enjoyed its spin on the narrative adventure game's dialog system, though my tendency to wait for a character to stop speaking before responding made me miss a few conversational pieces because I was supposed to interrupt them and, well, interrupting someone in dialog still feels alien in a game like this. But the Interrupts in Mass Effect didn't feel alien, so... I'll need to spend some time ruminating on that.

Oxenfree. It's good. Just don't bother with the collectibles; I added a good two hours to my playtime running around scooping them up, which wouldn't have been that bad but most of the collectibles are only obtainable when you near the end of the story, so basically the plot comes to a screeching halt if you choose to go gather up everything, and navigating the island without all the story happening becomes tedious quickly. Just read those letters on the Wiki or something.

Didn't care for the final twist, though. That's the kind of drama-destroying nonsense that made me give up on horror movies.

Oh yeah, quick note about the Switch version: It has a weird quirk where it "hitches" every so often and just kind of hangs all the action for a split-second before resuming. It's not game-breaking but if you're super sensitive about this stuff it might ruin this version for you.

[kintaris]

Didn't care for the final twist, though. That's the kind of drama-destroying nonsense that made me give up on horror movies.

I don't know if you already know, but there are narrative alterations in subsequent playthroughs. It's small stuff - nothing Nier level - but it really does add something. I loved the twist and so might be biased on the additional story nuggets, but even so it might be worth keeping a hold of your save, so you at least get to see the extra bits on any future playthroughs.

[Indiana747]

(Jan) Life is Strange: Before the Storm - PS4.

[AndrewBrown]

I don't know if you already know, but there are narrative alterations in subsequent playthroughs. It's small stuff - nothing Nier level - but it really does add something. I loved the twist and so might be biased on the additional story nuggets, but even so it might be worth keeping a hold of your save, so you at least get to see the extra bits on any future playthroughs.

I was aware, but I was unswayed. I don't mind ambiguity (see my comments about The Last of Us strewn across this forum) but if everything I do inevitably ends in the loop repeating or the adventure not happening at all, it's just a slap in the face to my effort and spitting on the plot.