Games You Have Beaten Recently?

[Sumez | 3,153]

19 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

While all of this sounds minor, it can become an issue if you have muscle memory from playing these games every year for over 25 years.

Nah man, I understand grievances like this completely. It might be a small thing, but if it affects your experience with the game, it counts.

When you said controls I imagined what you meant is that Lara moves slightly different, causing you to miss jumps etc., but sounds like it's mostly a question of input settings, and the lack of the ability to change it.
I haven't played these games in decades, so it probably wouldn't bother me - but it would bother me if I knew that I was playing a game that didn't play according to how the game was originally designed, in a package advertised as the new "ultimate" way to play those three games.

[TDIRunner | 2,884]

I finished the remaster of Tomb Raider II.  First time getting all secrets on a single playthrough for me.  I would like to also play through TR3, but I might need a break from the series before going through that entire game.  

My complaints with the remastered version of Tomb Raider II are few, and basically the same as TR1.  Overall, this set is well worth the price, especially if you are a big fan of the series.  

[Jaden | 152]

April 12th, 2024 - Half-Life (Windows) (Any%) (Hard Difficulty)

I've gotten a little Doom-ed out and wanted to try another FPS game. Thankfully, Half-Life scratched that itch for more first person action. Not only that, but this game is one of the few that has really gripped me from beginning to end. I was constantly wondering where the story would go, what strange aliens I'd be fighting next, and what puzzles I'd be solving. It's a really great game all the way through... well, except for Xen. Maybe it's because my first playthrough of this game was on hard mode, but Xen kicked my ass quite a few times. It was mainly those stupid flying things that shoot fireballs that drove me up the wall. The final boss also took me a while to figure out. Even after I realized I was supposed to destroy the crystals, I couldn't even tell if I was doing damage to it or not. That final batter was definitely my least favorite part of the game. Other than that, I think this made for an incredible experience. The atmosphere this game provides is unreal, especially for 1998. It genuinely creeped me out and startled me in a few places. And the level design and puzzles are all top notch stuff. My favorite puzzle might actually be the air strike one where you have to blow up these stone walls to get to the next area. Really clever stuff.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what to play next. To be honest, my interest in gaming has been kinda fading away for the past few years. I've even contemplated giving up video games for good and selling my entire collection. Half-Life really helped get me back into games again and I'm thankful for it. However, I still feel a bit directionless. I could do Half-Life 2 next, but there's so much other stuff I want to play and I kinda want to take a break from FPS games in general. I don't know. I'm sure I'll think of something.

[wongojack | 314]

7 hours ago, Jaden said:

April 12th, 2024 - Half-Life (Windows) (Any%) (Hard Difficulty)

I've gotten a little Doom-ed out and wanted to try another FPS game. Thankfully, Half-Life scratched that itch for more first person action. Not only that, but this game is one of the few that has really gripped me from beginning to end. I was constantly wondering where the story would go, what strange aliens I'd be fighting next, and what puzzles I'd be solving. It's a really great game all the way through... well, except for Xen. Maybe it's because my first playthrough of this game was on hard mode, but Xen kicked my ass quite a few times. It was mainly those stupid flying things that shoot fireballs that drove me up the wall. The final boss also took me a while to figure out. Even after I realized I was supposed to destroy the crystals, I couldn't even tell if I was doing damage to it or not. That final batter was definitely my least favorite part of the game. Other than that, I think this made for an incredible experience. The atmosphere this game provides is unreal, especially for 1998. It genuinely creeped me out and startled me in a few places. And the level design and puzzles are all top notch stuff. My favorite puzzle might actually be the air strike one where you have to blow up these stone walls to get to the next area. Really clever stuff.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what to play next. To be honest, my interest in gaming has been kinda fading away for the past few years. I've even contemplated giving up video games for good and selling my entire collection. Half-Life really helped get me back into games again and I'm thankful for it. However, I still feel a bit directionless. I could do Half-Life 2 next, but there's so much other stuff I want to play and I kinda want to take a break from FPS games in general. I don't know. I'm sure I'll think of something.

You are spot on here.  Great game, but then Xen feels like an unfinished add-on.  When you get a little distance, you'll hardly even remember that part.

As for what to play next, there's always Half Life 2!

[RH | 5,206]

9 minutes ago, wongojack said:

You are spot on here.  Great game, but then Xen feels like an unfinished add-on.  When you get a little distance, you'll hardly even remember that part.

As for what to play next, there's always Half Life 2!

Or for something same but different, there's Portal, which I just finished for the first time last week.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,916]

11 minutes ago, RH said:

Or for something same but different, there's Portal, which I just finished for the first time last week.

Just do the whole family

1. Half Life
2. Opposing Force
3. Blue Shift
4. Uplink
5. Half Life 2
6. Episode 1
7. Episode 2
8. Lost Coast
9. Portal
10. Portal 2
11. Alyx
12. ???

[fox | 1,759]

Rise of the Ronin.  Funny to play this after Like A Dragon Ishin, which is like the same story.

[wongojack | 314]

I recently beat Ghostbusters for both the SMS and the new Ultimate Edition homebrew for the Intellivision.

 

Ghostbusters UE for the Intellivision is a masterwork of taking a truly classic property, putting (almost) everything that could have been in it back then into a new game and releasing it as a homebrew.  The game will use Intellivoice and the ECS (if you have them) to play voice overs and enhanced music.  It has more scenes from the movie, more music from the movie and adds more challenge than the classic versions did by making a few smart updates to the item selection and the debt system.  They did stick to the early release endgame and omitted the stair climbing and vertical shooting level found in the NES and the SMS version, but the game is more streamlined and possibly better for it.  I appreciated that it ended up actually being kind of hard to catch the ghosts in this version.  Even with multiple strategies, I still miss a few here and there which adds to the replayability and challenge of what was such an impressive gaming sequence when the title released on the C64 all those years ago. 

On the other hand, what this version really does is show you the shortcomings of the original game.  Once you've gotten used to the ups and downs of ghost extermination (and know how to use bait to stop a Marshmallow attack) you'll find a game on default settings remarkably easy.  I mention that bit about the bait because when I played this game as a kid, I never knew I could reach over and press 'B' to stop the marshmallow man.  It wasn't until years later that I finally read the manual and finished the C64 version of the game.

As a huge Ghostbusters fan who has massive nostalgia for the original game, I am very happy with this.  I'm working to win with all of the cars which is proving to be a satisfying challenge because when you continue from a previous game, you must always finish with more money than you started.  So, if you buy the sports car, you've got to catch enough ghosts to pay it back before the city's PKE level reaches the critical state.  I give Ghostbusters UE a 4 out 5.  Without nostalgia, I might drop it down to a 3 due to the somewhat simple game loop and lack of true difficulty options, but I am still excited to keep playing it, and the little touches added make me smile whenever I catch a few ghosts.

 

 

Ghostbusters for the SMS is a game that I've been meaning to really sit down and play for years.  I got my vintage hardware out and even discovered that I'd acquired 2 physical copies of the game - overprepared.  The game makes some interesting choices in the beginning section, giving you more options to purchase equipment some of which I believe is unique to this version.  You are also given the chance to upgrade your equipment by stopping at a store on the map during gameplay.  This is really cool and opens up some differences in the game, but as I played with this equipment, I discovered that it just made the game easier.  It is an easy game to begin with and there are no difficulty options or post game difficulty increases, so carrying over money from a previous game makes me feel like the Monopoly man who just buys his way to victory. 

In the actual ghost catching sequences, the "streams" of the ghostbusters' proton packs are now pointed straight up, which means there's no way to cross the streams.  It also means that it is pretty hard for the ghosts to actually escape you once you've gotten them between your laser throwing ghost cowboys. Conservative shootin Tex.  Catching them in a trap rarely fails and the $$ just piles up faster than you can say I feel so funky.  Which reminds me that while the music is excellent there is no speech in this version.  That doesn't seem like a big deal, but as a fan of the old C64 version, I really missed the occasional computer voice encouraging me onward.  The 2 sections added to the game see you climbing a staircase while shooting at/avoiding ghosts and then shooting vertically towards Gozer (misspelled in the manual and the game as Gorza).  The staircase is remarkably difficult and the shooting sequence after it a little easier than expected.  Since the ghostbusters didn't actually shoot lasers at Gozer to defeat him/her to end the movie, this definitely feels like an add-on.  However, it does give the player a nice variety of gameplay and makes ending the game feel like more of an accomplishment than the versions released for less powerful platforms.

I was pleased with this version of Ghostbusters and appreciated the extra levels at the end to give me some variety and a challenging ending to overcome.  However, I spent most of my time playing as a hyper-efficient ghost catching team who could essentially upgrade my abilities at will.  Extra money just made the longest section of the game borderline boring.  I still enjoyed my time with the game, but I give it a somewhat disappointed 3 out of 5.  In a direct comparison of both of these games, the SMS certainly has more variety and all the advantages of its hardware, but if I'm going back in for more, I'd rather play the Intellivision version.

 

Edited May 13 by wongojack

[NostalgicMachine | 325]

TMNT 3 The Manhattan Project (NES)

[wongojack | 314]

I recently went through a bit of a VR phase.  I mentioned Alyx earlier in the thread, and I tried out 6-8 other VR games that I already had in my Steam library from various bundles acquired in the past.  I played two of those games enough to say I "beat" them or at least finished a common scenario to get to the credits.

Slinger VR - I think this game is well known among VR gamers, but it is still a bit obscure.  It has been sitting in my Steam library for years.  It has no achievements or trading cards to be earned, and I don't think it has ever received any updates.  Well, none of that matters because the gameplay is unique, challenging to master, and takes excellent advantage of VR.

There is no story.  You are simply thrust into an outer space playground of floating platforms that you must navigate by "slinging" out wires? beams? webs? from two devices that vaguely resemble VR hand controllers.  The challenges ramp up fairly slowly as the game introduces new enemies that you must swing around and defeat using various weapons scattered around the disconnected islands floating in the void.  You CAN die by falling or swinging away from the platforms and islands, but it is pretty rare that you can't save yourself from a fall.  When you do die, it is usually because of a faraway laser or a type of floating enemy who can vacuum you up if you aren't secured directly to a surface.

The game gives you a very real sense of 3d space in VR.  You're standing on platforms suspended on nothing, so the sense of height is very real, and I felt a feeling of actual danger many times while playing.  If you have any phobia of heights, I would absolutely avoid this game, but I found it very fun to sort of play around and safely experiment with the feeling of getting in and out of danger while swinging and falling.  This feeling alone was good enough to keep me playing Slinger through all of its 20 stages, but the gentle ramp up in difficulty also helped keep me interested.  The second to last level was a bit clumsy in that they went with the "Let's throw a ton of enemies at the player" strategy, but it (along with the final boss) proved to be a fun challenge to overcome on medium difficulty.

Slinger VR wouldn't even be a game without VR.  There's no point really comparing it to Spiderman or some other game where you swing on 3d platforms.  It is a VR darling and deserves to be, but it doesn't quite bump up to something that I would recommend to just anyone.  I give Slinger VR a 4 out of 5.

 

Battlezone Gold Edition (aka Battlezone VR) - A 2017 entry into the list of games now part of the Battlezone franchise.  I first played this game on PlayStation VR, and it gave me some slight VR sickness.  I finally came back to it because I knew it had promise, and I ended up really enjoying it.

You pilot a futuristic tank from inside a VR cockpit.  The immersive setting is very cool and gives you a great feeling of rockin a bad ass space tank.  The graphics are very stylized and serve the game well.  What's it styled like?  I'm glad you asked.  The game includes a version of the coin op Battlezone from 1980, and while the main game doesn't use exactly the same style, it adds color and builds on it quite well.  Unfortunately, the classic version in this release seemed a bit different than the original arcade game, so I quickly left it behind and returned to the modern adaptation.  VR is not required for this game or the extra game that mimics the original.  However, everything was designed for VR, so that will be your best experience.  I probably wouldn't bother without it.

The game has almost no story.  Mission setup is done on a gameboard where you move one hexagon at a time.  Each space gives you something to do.  Most of the time that something is go shoot a bunch of enemy tanks, but sometimes there are narrative style choices about whatever planet you are on and whatever conflict you are fighting in.  It doesn't matter because the main attraction here is piloting the tank, defeating enemies, upgrading the tank, and finally defeating the enemy AI core.

You can set up the board to be S,M,L and set the difficulty as you choose.  I managed to defeat the AI core on a medium sized board while playing on medium difficulty, and it was the right level of challenge.  The combat wasn't anything particularly special, but I found it to be quite fun.  The negatives are things like the fact that the missions end up being quite repetitive and the total length of a run against the AI core tends to be pretty long.  That means you see a lot of repeat maps and missions even within a single medium playthrough.  Thankfully those things aren't enough to keep you from coming back for another run.  The game does feature coop play, but I didn't get to experience that part.  Overall, I was very pleased with this version of Battlezone.  I give it a 4 out of 5.

[NostalgicMachine | 325]

Mortal Kombat II (Arcade) for TGM.

[rdrunner | 444]

My 8-year-old just got his first 100% completion, beating New Super Mario Bros U (on Switch).  We bought the game last Christmas and it's all he has wanted to play ever since.  Slight asterisk in that he needed help finding all the secret exits, but he legit played the whole thing by himself.  All this on his small allowance of roughly an hour of game time per week!

[NostalgicMachine | 325]

Kirby's Adventure (NES)

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES)

[Rhuno | 163]

2 hours ago, NostalgicMachine said:

Kirby's Adventure (NES)

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES)

Some good ones! I've never finished Dracula's Curse, I should remedy that soon. 

[NostalgicMachine | 325]

44 minutes ago, Rhuno said:

Some good ones! I've never finished Dracula's Curse, I should remedy that soon. 

It's really the last few sections that I get stuck on! I wanted to take all the paths to the end this time, so I had a few different games going at once. There are some hilarious exploits for some of the bosses!

[MegaMan52 | 2,556]

Super Mario RPG Remake completed. Very faithful to the original game (which was and still is my favorite game on the SNES).

[SamSpade | 7]

I went on a full blown Final Fantasy kick, played thru 15 and 16. Then I went back and beat OG7 and Crisis Core Reunion. I'm mentally preparing myself for remake and Rebirth here soon.

[fcgamer | 5,003]

Beat Dudes with Attitude a few months back.

[twiztor | 918]

Wario: Master of Disguise (Nintendo DS)
i didn't even know this game existed when i was playing the Wario Land games, or it also would have ended up on my backlog list.
this takes a lot of cues from those games, with an emphasis on puzzle solving to progress. the gimmick here is that Wario can transform into different personas, each with their unique abilities. this made for a fairly varied playthrough. 
the drawback is that this game leans HEAVILY on the touch screen. it is extremely monotonous to draw a costume on Wario each time to transform. and the minigames are SO DAMN REPETITIVE! 
weighing the positives and negatives, i still liked this quite a bit.

some synergy (?) in the final boss fight, as the villain takes on the form of a princess in pink. and then uses emotion-based offense, eerily reminiscent of Super Princess Peach (released 2 years earlier, also on the DS).

[TDIRunner | 2,884]

I finished the Switch remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door last night.  It had been a very long time since playing the original on GC.  In fact, it had been so long, it was almost like playing the game for the first time.  I still think this game is a masterpiece, and I'm glad it's more accessible to people who might not be able to play the original.  

I did not 100% the GC version the last time I played it, but I think I will try to go for it this time.  After finishing the game last night, I've already reloaded my save file and started collecting some of the badges I was missing.  I didn't finish the entire Pit of 100 Trials on my initial playthrough (I decided to bail at level 70 due to lack of items), but if I load up with health and flower items, I'm confident I will get through it on the second try.  

 

[MagusSmurf | 579]

Breath of Fire - 5/10

My opinion from prior playthroughs was that this game was a pretty mid SNES RPG with some decent ideas but janky execution.

And...yeah, that's still my opinion but even more so.

Soundtrack is good but they usually are for any reasonably decent JRPG.

imo there's an artistry to old sidescroller graphics that most overhead view games really struggled to match in comparison - and that's generally the case with the exploration segments here. The battle scenes are better and actually very good for a 1993 SNES JRPG - but it's not quite at the technical or stylistic level that they enhance the enjoyment much for me. The character designs for the party are great, but the in-game assets aren't quite able to fully convey their appeal.

Gameplay is pretty whatever. Mostly generic RPG stuff, and tends to be really easy at that. I don't necessarily mind an easy JRPG but there's not enough here to make the gameplay experience especially compelling. The dungeons are reasonably good I guess. But there's a lot of really weird balance and jank:

• While most enemies are nothing, there are a very small number of normal enemies with extremely disproportionately powerful attacks that can totally screw you over if you don't off them ASAP - but there's little to watch out for otherwise.
• A lot of bosses have neither group attacks nor particularly powerful single-target damage nor much else going for them so they can't really do much to threaten you. Like, for real, on group attacks: Gremlin has one, and then Cloud has one mid-game (that in my experience he's not very consistent in using), and Myst has one too that I think was weaker than Cloud's, and other than those I don't remember any with any notable strength until HornToad which is pretty deep into the game.
• Some pieces of equipment, despite having good defense values for the point in the game they become available and nothing to indicate there's a problem (some of them are even normal storebought stuff), have a hidden negative extra effect of increasing damage you received by a hidden multiplier (varies but up to x2), for no apparent reason. The WolfHt deserves particular note as one of these; Gremlin is much easier when Bo isn't taking double damage from his group attack because of it.
• After the first third or so the main character can transform into a dragon that typically makes him much stronger, but it takes up a turn to do so and normal battles mostly don't last long enough to make this worthwhile. Does speed up the typically nonthreatening boss battles a lot though. Then lategame you get a super special dragon transformation that all 8 party members have to turn into that has 999 HP and deals 999 damage to all enemies. There's no real catch; if you have it and use it, then with a few healing items (and sometimes you don't even need them), it just kind of wins the last several boss battles for you mostly on autobattle, and it's even required to unlock the true final boss.
• Your 5th party member, Gobi, kinda sucks. He has fairly bad stats and his spells only work underwater and there's only one underwater dungeon. He joins pretty weak with bad equipment and with no other characters in the party, you have to reach a town you've never been to and aren't told the location of, with shops, inns, and save points inaccessible until you get there - but if you game over (and the enemies can be pretty threatening when Gobi's by himself) the game doesn't really have a sensible place to send you back to that's consistent with how the game generally works, so it just spawns you at the save point at your destination with the (not super punishing) game over monetary penalty deducted. It's not a major problem but feels unfair and super dumb.
• One of your party members, Karn, gains the ability to get much stronger by fusing with some other party members (this persists outside of battles)...but it's so much of an improvement that, except for brief sections where you need their overworld abilities, Bo and Gobi might as well not exist after you get it. Ox stops existing lategame as well for the same reason.
• One of Karn's fusions can only be used when underwater. At the earliest point you can get it, the only underwater sections left are a couple brief trips to reach other sections of the overworld - and by then you have underwater transportation available that nullifies random encounters.
• Mogu joins so weak so late he's pretty much useless.
• While the rest of the game isn't immune from such issues, the endgame feels particularly padded with questionable time wasting and NPC quests - climbing up to and through Tock Tower twice (the developers seemed aware this was annoying; when the story dictates you'd have to go a third time the game instantly sends you to just before the end of it; and then there's a fourth time if you want to get what was in that last treasure chest it teased you about, which ends up not really being worthwhile); gathering the items for the amnesia cure; fixing the elevator; finding out you suddenly need to go get a special item elsewhere when you get to the top of the elevator...this is pretty much all back to back and then there's more to open up the final dungeon a little later.
• The experience/gold received for random encounters in the last few dungeons seemed just outright worse than it was previously.
• There's no indication of how much experience it takes to reach the next level up - and the increasing amount of experience to level up scales up very hard sometimes.

Most of this stuff isn't a big deal and not all of it's necessarily even bad but all together the game feels very unpolished.

The general set-up and storytelling are heavily reminiscent of Dragon Quest, and Dragon Quest IV in particular, but I don't think Dragon Quest storytelling is particularly good. It produces reasonably memorable local RPG crisis scenarios for your party to solve, but often doesn't care much about a running or overall plot, or even about your own party members beyond maybe how they fit into the local crisis where they join. So over the course of a 20+ hour game the stories often up feeling kind of hollow. I suspect Yuji Horii knew the potential shortcomings of this style too, which is likely why so many of the Dragon Quest games have unique gimmicks to how they're structured to spice things up. I admire the attempt even if I'm not too impressed by many of the results. But Breath of Fire 1 doesn't really have a similar gimmick, and the negative effect this had on the storytelling, despite some neat ideas for local RPG crises, is apparent. Another miss is that almost all of the local crisis villains (some of which are reoccurring!) for the first two-thirds are generic evil empire commanders who don't even names or unique designs until they transform for the battle where you kill them. This was also not one of Ted Woolsey's better translation efforts, but given just how bad Capcom's own work there for the sequel would be, letting Square handle the localization on this game was probably the right call.

Edited July 26 by MagusSmurf

[Rhuno | 163]

11 minutes ago, MagusSmurf said:

Breath of Fire - 5/10

My opinion from prior playthroughs was that this game was a pretty mid SNES RPG with some decent ideas but janky execution.

And...yeah, that's still my opinion but even more so.

I liked this game a lot as a kid, but I never made it very far. I played it through to completion a couple years ago and more or less agree with your take. I did enjoy the early parts of the game as much as ever, but it definitely lost steam for me as it dragged on. Around the underwater village is where it started feeling more like a chore.

[Aguy | 782]

I've been out of regular gaming lately, so I played Saturday Morning RPG as a short game to get back into the swing of things. It only took 6 hours or so.

[NostalgicMachine | 325]

Super Mario World (SNES) Star 96!

[Rhuno | 163]

Astyanax for the NES. I'd never played this game prior to picking it up recently. It feels like it wants to be a Genesis game with its large sprites and character designs. It's a fun game overall and one that I can see myself going back to repeatedly when I'm looking for something fairly short to play through.

Edited August 4 by Rhuno