Games Completed 2019

[Chopper]

Man oh man....

Slay the Spire completed (with one character out of three) and Ascension Level unlocked, whatever that is, after an all-consuming ten days or so.

Great game, easy to understand but crazy difficult. And unbelievably addictive, it's like opening a loot box on every turn.

I think it may be coming out of Early Access soon; it's a strong contender for game of the year already. It'll be hard if not well nigh impossible to knock it off its perch.

I am elated.

*Notices 1000 new posts* What's been happening around here then?

[ColinAlonso]

Jan 16 - Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4)

Not near the highs of 5 or 0 but its more Yakuza so I'll enjoy it.

Dialing down the combat styles down to one hasn't helped. In 4 and 5 there were 4 separate characters with distinct styles and 0 and Kiwami allowed characters to switch it up.

The locales look fantastic in the new engine, its a lovely graphical upgrade.

I think these changes happened in Yakuza 6. I played this first though because I've now finished 0-5 and can end with Kiryu's finale later this year or early next year.

[James]

Spoiler: show

1st Jan - Virginia (Xbox One)

13th Jan - Gravity Rush 2 (PS4)

This game!

[MajorGamer]

Jan 2 - War for the Overworld (PC)

Jan 13 - Pyre (PC)

I'm torn on this one. Loved the music and the characters. You are thrown into another land, a prison for life, where only a specific ritual can get people out. Finding out what crimes the many characters you run into makes for a good little mystery as you go through. As you travel the land in your wagon, you get some choice as to what forks to take that will give temporary or permanent bonuses or items and you don't really know for sure what it will be. Just a hunch from one of your group.

The ultimate goal are the rituals which is where the action is. This is the part I don't particularly care for even though I appreciate all the little bits going on. It is essentially 3v3 basketball. Only one person on a team can move at a time. Every character has an aura of varying sizes around them that banishes opponents for several seconds if they touch it. Each one also has a different attack they can utilize to help. Getting the ball removes that character's aura so they can no longer attack. Running the ball into the goal reduces their pyre (first to 0 loses) and banishes that characters for the next round so whoever just scored is at a disadvantage. You can throw the ball in instead of running but it takes much longer but it won't cause the character to be banished. There are loads of other modifiers that you can activate as the game goes on to make things harder which will get your own characters to earn more experience for further skills.

The whole catch is that only one character can be freed at the end of each rite and seeing as it is a mandatory team of 3, there is no wholly good end. This even includes your opponents. Yes, win or lose the rite, the game continues. It simply affects the ending. Again, it does a lot of cool things but the rites themselves didn't do much for me.

[Chopper]

Slay the Spire completed as the second, rogue, character out of three total.

I don't know if that means I've completed it twice, or am two thirds towards completing it

The second completion took one twelfth of the time the first did.

Fractions!

Currently struggling to get to grips with the third character, who has a completely different playstyle.

[Chopper]

Slay the Spire with the third and final character. Pretty great game. The biggest threat to productivity I have yet encountered.

[Simonsloth]

Spoiler: show

January:
Tale of Tales Collection
Virginia

18th Jan:

Gravity Rush 2

Done. Easy on the eyes and the ears but less so on the thumbs.

[MajorGamer]

Jan 2 - War for the Overworld (PC)
Jan 13 - Pyre (PC)

Jan 16 - Heroes of Hammerwatch (PC)

A fun little roguelite with a surprising amount of variety. There are seven different classes that all have different attacks and abilities to get you through. You get to upgrade your town between runs that will let you upgrade each character. There is also a fountain that let's you choose modifiers for your run for further bonuses. There is even a shop in town where you can purchase a couple items to get a bit of a boost at the start of the run. Beating bosses even gives bonuses between characters, such as with the paladin giving a small armor boost to everyone else. Add in the multiple new game + there are and this can last quite a bit. The best part? It is co-op up to four players.

If you want a sorta twin-stick shooter roguelite, this one works fairly well.

[FemalePheromones]

Just finished Ori and the Blind Forest.

648 deaths.....

[Alex79]

JAN - Super Mario Land (Nintendo Gameboy)

JAN - Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (Megadrive on PS4)

What an absolute shiter of a game. Just dreadful in every way imaginable. Terrible controls, terrible movement, terrible graphics and sound, and terrible gameplay. Genuinely one of the worst games I've ever played.

I purchased the Sega Megadrive Classics collection on PS4, and decided I was actually going to try to finish the games for once, rather than have a quick go on them all and never look at them again, as is what usually happens when I buy compilations of this sort.

Alex Kidd was the first game on the package, so I thought I'd complete it. It truly is a steaming turd of a game, not a single redeeming feature. How this counts as a 'classic' when games like Outrun, Afterburner and Hang On were left off is beyond me. It's easy to slate a game from so long ago, but let's remember, this was released a year AFTER Super Mario Bros 3! It's an embarrassment of a game, and should be confined to the scrap heap of shame. Avoid at all costs!

EDIT: And I didn't even get a bloody trophy!

[ColinAlonso]

Spoiler: show

Jan 16 - Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4)

Jan 20 - FTL: Faster Than Light (PC) (Easy)
I planned to play A Bird Story today, but saw FTL on my Steam account and thought 'ah go on then'. I finished it on my third attempt today. Not bad as its only my third successful completion. I find it quite hard, even on easy.

[Chopper]

Jan 16 - Heroes of Hammerwatch (PC)

A fun little roguelite with a surprising amount of variety.

I enjoyed Hammerwatch but didn't know this existed; I will check it out at some stage.

Gris (PC)

I really hate platform/puzzlers, so I'm sure this has plenty of merit but really not for me.

[ratsoalbion]

How this counts as a 'classic' when games like Outrun, Afterburner and Hang On were left off is beyond me.

The Mega Drive version of Out Run is by no-one’s estimation a classic, nor After Burner I wouldn’t have said. Super Hang-On is a decent port, considering, but they went with the arcade original on the Xbox 360 Vintage Collection for a reason.

That said, they did put Super Thunder Blade on this compilation so quality didn’t seem to be a prerequisite for its selection of arcade conversions.

[DomsBeard]

You need to play Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Shenmue 1 and 2 Alex as I am pretty sure between those it has the games you want

[ColinAlonso]

Do you mean Yakuza 0? Kiwami 2 had Virtua Fighter 2 and Virtua-On.

[Alex79]

You need to play Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Shenmue 1 and 2 Alex as I am pretty sure between those it has the games you want

Yeah I do have those games, Yakuza 0 has the best version of Outrun, the Shenmue one doesn't feel quite right to me, although the Hang On and Space Harrier games are good on there.

Yeah Leon, I'm probably misremembering how good they were on Megadrive! Still, better than Alex Skidd I'm sure!

[Flabyo]

The 3ds has the best version of outrun. And power drift.

[ratsoalbion]

Arguably the Switch now has the best version of Out Run. Other than the loss of the 3D aspect, the Switch version has everything that the 3DS version had and adds more features, including (optionally) the game’s original graphics reconfigured for ‘widescreen’. Sensational both handheld and docked on the big screen.

[Sinclair Gregstrum]

Jan – Streets of Rage 2 - Sega Mega Drive Classics (Switch)

Jan - Detroit: Become Human - (PS4 Pro)

My interest in this game really started long before the game itself had even been announced. As a guy with a film degree who wrote his dissertation on the evolution of robots in cinema, the 2012 Kara tech demo was right up my street and I’d always hoped that it would one day be used to fuel a game. So when Detroit: Become Human was officially unveiled at Paris Games Week in 2015, I was all-in.

Fast forward to release in May 2018 and for a few reasons my excitement had waned somewhat. There had been a couple of decent but not stellar E3 showings (for me at least), along with some controversy around working practices and behaviour at Quantic Dream that had soured the pre-release hype cycle. So despite generally good reviews (currently 78 on Metacritic) I didn’t run out to pick it up day one, and then life and other games got in the way. So Detroit just remained on the periphery of my radar from then on, that is until Black Friday hit and the game was on offer for as little as £13. Moral objections to sexist work practices shamefully forgotten, I went ahead and bought the game.

So the game itself, I really enjoyed with some reservations. I play all games of this nature the same way – ‘what would I do?’. If I’ve got time to think I’ll make an informed decision based on how I feel I would handle the situation, and if it’s a quick-fire instance I shoot from my personal hip as it were. I don’t do replays to see alternative routes or endings – the experience I have is what it was meant to be, and I leave it there. In the case of Detroit that led me down some really interesting rabbit holes, many of which (certainly in the final act and ending) took me down some paths that according to the game only a few percent of people took (after each chapter you can see a flow chart with worldwide player and friend stats).

The game is well written if a little heavy handed at times, but combine this with some fantastic performances by the mo-cap cast and you’ve got something that is easily in the upper echelons of narrative storytelling in video games. Detroit also largely excels from an overall audio-visual perspective. The level of care and consistency in the art direction of the world along with the quality of the orchestral score and incidental sound effects really mark this out as a game with top tier production values that’s a pleasure to experience on a big telly with a decent headset or speakers.

On flip side, as mentioned above the script can be a little too blatant at times, really hammering home it’s thematic motivations when a slightly lighter touch would have not only sufficed but probably been even more effective. There’s also not a huge amount of originality on show here in terms of either the narrative, visuals or sound design. The game is executed to an incredibly high standard in so many areas and Quantic Dream really deserves credit for that, but I’ve seen this all before. Maybe not in one place, but it’s certainly a pastiche of some pretty well trodden sci-fi paths. Now to be fair as mentioned upfront I’m a film grad a with dissertation relating to the subject matter of the game, so I’ve probably consumed more robot-based media than most and am an unfair benchmark, but I’d expect even a casual sci-fi fan will feel in familiar territory a number of times throughout their playthrough.

Overall, Detroit: Become Human is an excellent video game if you’re into this type of video game. It won’t convert David Cage-haters, and it won’t blow the minds of sci-fi fans looking for an original answer to the “what makes us human?” question, but in its best moments the game is a genuinely poignant, exhilarating, and morally challenging piece. It is a work of art executed with great care and skill, brought to life by a narrative that while derivative is delivered with commitment and to an incredibly high standard.

A worthy thing then, and I look forward to seeing where Quantic Dream goes next.

[Magical_Isopod]

The 3ds has the best version of outrun. And power drift.

And Sonic Generations.