Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Ralizah This is why I’m forcing my mum to play along with me and my brother. Sneaky completion of each level as Toad!

@LieutenantFatman No PSVR for me I'm afraid. That also means that the game does the annoying thing as showing as 97% complete despite having the platinum..

@Thrillho Ugh. I'm planning on playing Concrete Genie soon. 100% trophy completion is locked behind access to PSVR? That sucks. Even with the platinum, I still feel like the game is mocking me when it locks 100% completion behind some additional purchase.

@nessisonett Three people at once? That must be chaotic. Especially if there's competition for the crown. The crown turns 3D World from a cute platformer into a blood sport.

@Ralizah The shared life pool stops it from becoming too mean-spirited! Otherwise we’d be chucking each other off cliffs 😂

@Ralizah Yeah, it’s got a separate list for VR trophies. There can’t be many on there to only be a couple of percent.

@RogerRoger 95% with the platinum FYI. It really is an easy platinum though as the vast majority of trophies come about pretty organically, it's mostly just hunting for the few pages you miss and some of the "genie moments" paintings.

Finally got around to beating Dark Souls 3, after being sat in my backlog for nearly 3 years.

I was looking for a game to get me back into the flow after taking a near 6month break & it did just that.

First time I resorted to using a summon in a souls game, as I really got sick of the lothric castle bonfire run to the last lord of cinder- I’m sure I must have missed a nearer bonfire... . Overall a good game, but I’m getting a bit tired of the souls formula. Fantastic soundtrack though.

I beat Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls yesterday. A grades on every chapter, found all chapters of Socki the Sock and got nearly all the Bling Bullets and hit lists with a playtime of just over 16 hours clocked.

Having the 3rd person shooter-esque gameplay instead of the Visual Novel stuff was a nice change of pace and I actually quite liked it even if it was a little mechanically lacklustre in this spinoff.

The puzzle rooms were great too and I actually wished there was more of them... Or at least a couple of harder puzzles as I pretty much solved every one first try (The only ones I didn't were the Monokuma kid ones where I got spotted... But I just reloaded my save to complete it properly)

As for the story and character side of things... It was very much a Danganronpa game despite the gameplay shift. Though unlike the other ganes in the series... I got really uncomfortable at this a number of times with some of the events shown and the backstories for some of the characters and had to put the game down a few times.

The English voice acting I thought was really good with my highlights being Michelle Ruff as Jataro and Amanda Céline Miller as Toko (She was also Shirokuma which surprised me)

The finale got a bit long in tooth and the game did feel a bit longer then I thought it was... But overall I did quite like it.

I got this for £3.99 at the same time as Cuphead and honestly... I ain't gonna remember, and kinda regret buying, Cuphead. But I'll definitely remember this.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Interesting to read about your experience with UDG. Glad you enjoyed it. I can agree with pretty much everything you said. A nice change of pace, yet a familiar romp through the Danganronpa universe.
I am surprised that it trumps Cuphead though. I’ve not played that game, but as far as critical acclaim, the two games are on completely different levels.

I just didn't get on with Cuphead @Th3solution all that much unfortunately in the end.

I wanted to play it ever since it was first announced to be Xbox and PC only as I loved the 30's cartoon aesthetic... So when it was finally announced to be coming to PS4 last year I jumped right on it.

But I found it rather frustrating at times to be honest. I got to the King Dice fight and I just haven't been bothered to go back to it as it's such a slog to get through (with one of the bosses in that boss rush in particular getting on my pip thanks to crap in the foreground obscuring the screen every now and again).

The last Island in general I found was a test of patience and I was mainly getting through it for the sake of it, rather then my own enjoyment.

Despite me usually getting through games regardless of that (Like Days Gone or NieR for example) I just couldn't be bothered to make the effort in "getting gud" enough at the tiresome gameplay and there was no story to fall upon (Which was my main problems with DG & NieR as they played just fine).

The gameplay just wasn't all that exciting or fun to me and it really was only the visuals that I was interested in with Cuphead.

Ultra Despair Girls may have made me uneasy a number of times with it's plot points and it may not have been as polished as Cuphead or as visually interesting either... But I just had more fun with it simply and that's all that matters sometimes. 😄

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy My sentiments exactly. I’m thankful that I watched a Let’s Play of Cuphead when it came to PlayStation because I was ready to buy it on simple reputation alone, like I did with Undertale. Well, after watching the gameplay it was pretty clear to me that it wouldn’t be my cup o’ tea. Still, the endless amount of universal praise for the game often makes me wonder if I’m not giving it a fair shake. Sometimes it requires taking over the controller to truly feel the enjoyment of a game, and certainly there are plenty of times that I was unimpressed while watching gameplay but had a lot of fun actually playing a given game. But reading your experience solidifies my resolve that Cuphead and I just aren’t likely to get along. At least not at this stage in my gaming life.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I agree about Cuphead, it veered too far towards ‘just not fun’ on the difficulty scale at times. I am glad I beat it though, it felt like an actual accomplishment. King Dice was the hardest fight by a mile!

And that’s my mum now beaten Arkham Asylum. She did enjoy it although had quite a few little grievances with things like how stiff Batman feels and the quick Batarang not always registering. Some of the boss fights were a bit frantic for her too, especially the Poison Ivy fight. I noticed that the game’s aged quite a bit now, having played it a few years ago myself. The atmosphere’s dead on though.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Glad to hear you enjoyed Ultra Despair Girls (not everyone takes to the... erm... controversial subject matter). I totally agree that this game really deepened my appreciation of Toko's character (who I just found sort of annoying in the first game), since she receives some great development, and I love the relationship she cultivates with Komaru. I thought the Danganronpa spin on a Children of the Corn-esque yarn was cool. Lots of callbacks to previous games, too.

Although I enjoy Cuphead even more. I'm not generally a fan of 'boss rush' games, but the combination of utterly bewitching aesthetics and ingenious, pattern-driven bosses really did it for me. I've played it 4 times since 2017 across two platforms. Two 100% playthroughs on the normal difficulty, one non-completionist Expert playthrough, and an aborted NG+ perfect Expert-level playthrough. I got through about half the bosses getting S-ranks. But here's the thing, Expert is MUCH, MUCH harder than normal difficulty by default, and getting full marks (using multiple specials, killing them under a certain amount of time, parrying a certain number of pink objects, and not taking any damage) during an Expert boss fight is... something. You effectively have to learn to play perfectly. I didn't quit because I couldn't beat the bosses on Expert, but because I'd often kill them one or two seconds too late to get an S-rank. I also couldn't have the extra HP item that allows you to tank a hit without your score being affected equipped because it lowers your damage output, and if you aren't maximizing dps during an Expert-level fight, you're not going to beat it quickly enough to S-rank it.

@nessisonett Tagging you since you mentioned it as well.

@Kidfried It’s more that my mum weaves using the analogue stick at the best of times, never mind with someone who feels like a giant lump of wood to move 😂😂

@RogerRoger Yeah, we have the trilogy on PS4 and while she did have a few issues, she enjoyed it for the most part so is likely to play Arkham City. Not sure what she’ll play in between, there’s so many games on so many consoles that it’s hard to choose!

@RogerRoger @nessisonett At the time, I preferred Arkham City over Asylum and it was one of my very favorite PS3 games. But in retrospect, I think I like Arkham Asylum as a better legacy title that has stood the test of time better. I don’t know since I didn’t replay them at all. The open world formula has been done so much since then and probably so much better than in Arkham City that I suspect it might feel stale to go back to. But at the time the genre wasn’t as over-saturated and I had a blast with Arkham City.

@RogerRoger @Th3solution I definitely fall down the Arkham Asylum side. I think it’s a tighter experience. City is a great game but the open world kinda gets in the way of the experience as you spend a lot of time going from point A to point B and the Riddler Trophies are a nightmare to mop up.

I finally beat Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim there. I haven’t been so happy to see the back of a game for a while. It’s not that the game’s bad, per se, it’s just a massive slog. Seems to fit in between the two styles of games in that it has the action combat but retains the insane level requirements to even do 1 damage to most enemies which means you have to grind a whole bunch.

@RogerRoger How do you think Origins has aged then? As I recall, you loved that one right?

After a good few years, I’ve finally beaten The Witness with all lasers. One more trophy to go for the platinum which relies on randomised puzzles which is good because I haven’t cheated the whole game and it means only people who deserve the platinum will earn it!