Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Bundersvessel nice dude, that sounds lovely. I love a quiet little known oasis much rather than holiday-maker central for sure. And it sounds like you’ll have it all planned out having been there under different circumstances previously. In the words of my nation… it’ll be lush 😉

@Black_Swordsman It’s been a while but I typically enjoy the castle types of settings so I liked the opening archstone levels like the Gates of Boletaria, Inner Ward, Lord’s Path. The underground and crypt like levels are more confusing and claustrophobic. And the swamp like areas are so annoying because of the environmental effects.

There’s several great bosses, but I would name Adjudicator as one that comes to mind because of its great design and the Storm King boss was great because of its uniqueness.

No f***ing way Midnight Suns ends on a cliffhanger. I really enjoyed it too, but now it’ll be forever left open.

Just finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on Series X after 30 hours of playtime. The endgame was an absolute drag, the game prepares you for what is seemingly the final boss and then it turns out there's like five more hours of the game. The devs did a very poor job of setting the right expectations for the player, as hearing stuff like that and it not turning out to be true will make you feel like the game is going on for far longer than it should be.

Anyway, the game itself was fantastic, even though it came with a lot of frustrations. At one point it felt like every time I played a session, I was going to get frustrated. Either because of the exploration aspect, which is pointless early on when you don't have all your abilities, or because of poor game design, like not knowing where to go as the path forward is a small gap in the wall that is not obvious.

What I liked about the game was how much stuff there was to do. There are so many side activities, like gardening or a strategy board game, that I never touched on because I just wanted to focus on the story. But I can definitely see myself spending dozens of hours more on this game if I truly wanted to. You definitely get a lot of bang for your buck, which is great.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with the game. Still can't believe that I only paid €6 to play through it, which is more than worth it.

Just finished the story in Fallout New Vegas. I chose the path of Mr. House! It was a really good game but somehow, I liked Fallout 3 better. Definitely in the minority here

I've finished Hi-Fi Rush and loved it (last boss was pretty hard). Unfortunately the trophies in this one are incredibly grindy so I will not be pursuing them.

Also finally finished the rest of Frog Detective

May’s RetroAchievements fare was a mixed bag.

Pokémon Platinum - Incredible game, think it’s the 5th or 6th time beating it. Second only to HeartGold personally.

Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters - Hated it. Dreadful even considering it’s a PSP game. Enemy placement annoying. Weapons are peashooters. Bosses have too much health. Clank Arena is laughably bad.

Sonic Adventure - First time actually beating the Dreamcast version (honestly looks better than DX). Really good for the most part other than Big being truly terrible. The levels are pretty varied at least but I maintain that 2 is a colossal step up from what’s still really great attempt at bringing Sonic into true 3D. Sonic’s final boss is painful though.

Kirby’s Dream Land 2 - Decent in some areas, the rainbow drops are cryptic to the point of being Nintendo Power fodder at times. Needed them all for the final boss which is one hell of a boss. Beat it only because the game registered like 5 hits when I deflected his bullets back at him. Resented it by the end.

Yoshi’s Island - Honestly never beat this one before now. Played the first couple of worlds loads of times over the years though. Yeah, don’t get the love for this one. Starts out well actually, Mario in a bubble creates a different type of lose condition. Until the insta death pits and spikes ramp up, killing the game as Mario’s bubble stops mattering. It’s a chore towards the end. An utter chore. I’d consider myself pretty good at games but a lot of these older ones are frustrating beyond belief.

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction - Not a hidden gem. I’d played the opening years ago thinking it was cool getting to blow up things as the Hulk. Yeah, the rest of the game is getting ganked by 4 million tanks and planes while trying to move at all beyond the hitstun. Some of those missions are the worst PS2 jank I’ve ever played. Punisher clear by a country mile.

Finished my first playthrough on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and absolutely loved it. Just one more holocron to mop up and then an extra playthrough on Sith Master difficulty (Sith Lord was tough enough 😅).

Just finished Skyrim and both of its DLCs. I have beat it before but not the Dragonborn DLC. It was excellent!

Main Game - It is great and you can see why it is ported to every toaster in the world! Approachable and not that hard! Great progression system and SO MANY things to do!

Dawnguard DLC - it is like a Castlevania game and you are a Belmont

Dragonborn DLC - cool new isle that brings you back to Morrowind

All of that on a tiny Switch card

Finished my first playthrough on Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition and was a pretty decent FPS. Some nice weapon variety, some pretty cool implementation around reward for stylish play, decent looking for a 7th gen game. Still seems like a fair bit of work left for the platinum but yeah will keep chipping away at it.

@Jimmer-jammer I am intrigued by Indika tbh… every review and reaction to it has been positive and I do love me some crazy. Glad that you enjoyed. I have it on the wishlist as I’m in no real rush… but the moment I see a deal I’ll pounce like a nun on an opportunity to do some solemn recitation.

@Jimmer-jammer so I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on Russian orthodoxy but… I am a massive fan of The Great which involves the state religious dogma as one of the various comedic tentpoles of the show. From the reviews I’ve watched, I’m definitely feeling it.

@Jimmer-jammer yeah I’m sure that a better understanding of the period and the culture is gonna help with the appreciation to be fair… but hopefully not integral. As someone who got their foundation in British history from Blackadder I’ll give this the old college-try 😉

@Jimmer-jammer you’ve cleared some games lately mate fair play

Games I recently beat? Yakuza and Ratchet and Clank for the ps2, oh and Rift Apart as well!

Just finished The Rising Tides DLC for Final Fantasy XVI. Honestly quite disappointed with both this DLC and Echoes of the Fallen. The new abilities in The Rising Tides are so uninspiring, they are just similar to other abilities. So I decided to not even utilise them. The story was good but it honestly felt like it should've been part of the main game. The boss fight against Leviathan was awesome but it was absolutely brutal. I died more times during this fight than throughout the entire base game. There's this one part in the fight where you have to prevent Leviathan from using Tsunami and you only have a certain amount of time to do so. I came close so many times but the game wants you to do a perfect run and it's so stupid because it ruined the flow of that fight.

I also can't believe how few times you level up throughout the DLC. With the expansion, the level cap is raised from 50 to 60. At the end of the DLC, I was at level 52 and I started it at level 50.

I enjoyed being back in the world of FFXVI because this game is phenomenal. But the DLCs were simply not that good.

I recently beat Dragon’s Dogma 2. It’s probably my favorite RPG of all time, and one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played.

I am kinda bummed about the game though. I got the true ending (the unmoored world), evacuated everyone and completed all trials, but didn’t get the trophy for evacuation despite only spending two days in this place and resting only once. I got the trophy for doing all trials in the place, so it should have coincided with the other, but alas it did not. It makes me not want to do a NG+ to get the platinum trophy.

Right now watching the credits roll on Sea of Stars after just short of 30 hours in the game, it's been pretty good. Not as great as the reviews and hype had led me to expect but a solid old school style RPG experience. Enjoyable story, good cast of characters, gorgeous pixel art style and some funky tunes.
Main complaints were that it seemed to drag towards the end and that the gameplay never really evolves, you're pretty much doing the same thing in battles in the thirtieth hour as in the third.
Still glad I got to play it through PS+ and will probably spend some more time on it picking up a few more trophies.

@sorteddan I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment on Sea of Stars. It’s a great game, but it had its flaws. The combat system was awesome but it never evolved, unfortunately. And the game dragged near the end. If there was maybe 5 hours less of the end game, then my praises would be much higher for it.

Yakuza Kiwami 2. A little underwhelmed by the experience, I'm not gonna lie. Total downgrade from Kiwami 1 in terms of the story. Parts of the game felt like padding to lengthen an otherwise thin narrative. Wasn't really a fan of the changes to combat. Majima was relegated to some lame minigame in a construction site.

Oh, and I hate with a passion whoever thought it was a good idea to put an insta-death QTE in the final boss battle. I was playing with Xbox controller prompts, which always confuse me, because they're mirrored Nintendo ones, so I probably did that last fight ten times before accidentally getting the QTE right. In retrospect, I should've added Playstation button prompts.

The ending is a butt-pull fake out. Ryuji Goda had good screen presence, but the game did very little of interest with him.

It's Yakuza, so I still liked it, but... eh. After Kiwami 1 and what I played of 0, it was a letdown, I won't lie.

Also, this action combat system sucks for bosses. Can't wait to get to the turn-based games.