52 Games Challenge 2018

[justin8301]

14. Sonic Mania Plus (Switch) 7/24

[bikingjahuty]

Newest review:
43. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64): There are few games that are as important, memorable, timeless or fun to me as Ocarina of Time. Like many other games I've played this year, Ocarina has been a staple of my top 10 games of all time for many years and it was only proper that I replayed it, again, to make sure it still stood up as one of the best games I've ever played. No surprise at all, it does and retains nearly every ounce of specialness its had for me since I first beat it back in 1999. The only aspect of Ocarina of Time that I find less enjoyable is that I have played and beat it so many times that I find almost nothing about the game challenging and outside the locations of specific heart pieces and Skulltulas I can beat this game with nearly no assistance whatsoever. Because of this there are parts of the game that lack the excitement they used to, but they do very little to diminish my overall enjoyment of Ocarina of Time. The game's music, graphics and gameplay were all amazing for their time and even today they are very pleasing to the senses. Perhaps more important than reaffirming my love for this game, which I last beat on the 3DS around 2-years ago, I wanted to see how I felt about it in comparison to Breath of the Wild, the only Zelda title to even come close to touching Ocarina of Time. While there are specific aspects of Ocarina I like better, overall Breath of the Wild is the better game with no doubt in my mind now. In fact, Breath of the Wild has a very real chance of becoming my favorite game of all time, which will be determined after I beat Shenmue and Shenmue 2 later this year. But I digress. Ocarina of Time is a timeless masterpiece and I am convinced that it will always hold a place in my favorite games of all time no matter what I end up playing down the road. (7/25/18) [48/50]

[kamikazekeeg]

40 - Mega Man X (Switch 2018) - BEAT - Been a long time since I seriously played this one and it was interesting to return to it after all this time.  I definitely love this series a lot more than the original series.  Gameplay is just better, bar none.  Level design wasn't too hard, but I was surprised by how short the levels were.  Some were longer than others for sure.  Bosses are a mixed bag, ranging from fun designs, to being kinda obnoxious.  Sigma sucks to fight and you are required to be fully upgraded to handle it, which doesn't make it a good fight, it's just how long can you survive while guzzling e-tanks.  I'm glad Wiley isn't here for sure and I like how they designed the final levels to incorporate the boss gauntlet.  It's an overall good time though.

Kinda made me laugh at the end, the dialogue is like "And those who sacrificed themselves will never return...ever...for reals.  Dead forever and ever and they will never return to this series.  They will forever be dead and not a super badass character that you'll eventually play as...nope, never..."

From here on though, I don't know a ton about the series.  Never really played them, so it'll be interesting to see how the series progresses until it gets to the bad stuff.

[sergreyjoy]

1. Dragon Quest IV (NDS)

2. Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja (NDS)

3. The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Seasons (GBC)

4. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA)

5. Metroid Fusion (GBA)

Well, this one was a mixed bag. Can’t say I liked the fact that it was linear (which prompted the developers to hide the way to progression as badly as secret items in previous entries.....tedious). Anyway, not much to say....just glad it’s over.

6. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360)

7. Deadspace 2 (360)

8. Dark Souls (PS3)

9. Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (PS2)

10. Beyond Good & Evil (PS2)

11. Dragon Quest Heroes (PS4)

12. Digimon World (PS1)

[telly]

Game 11 - Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Master: World Tournament 2006 (GBA) - 30 hours

I counted this game beat when I unlocked all of the duelists and beat them all 5 times. Never got the credits to show up but I'm counted the game as beat since I basically unlocked everything in terms of the campaign.

+ Anyway, this game is a fantastic simulation of the real card game and is a lot better than 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship Tournament 2005. For one thing, it's really easy to create decks, search for cards, and save your favorite recipes, since you can hold up to 60 decks. I really like how the forbidden/limited list was set from the beginning and you could change it with a password if you wanted to. It was so annoying in 2005 that the banlist would change every couple hours or so since I would need to change my deck every time for it to be legal. It was nice that the actual packs were in the game (LOB to Shadow of Infinity), so it was easier to grab the cards I wanted. There was a ton of content too, with tons of challenges, puzzles, and pretty decent AI. If the time spent playing is indiciation the game really does have some lasting value.

- There are a couple issues I had, along with one nitpick. First of all, like the other game I played, there's no story at all. You don't even fight anyone from the show or anything, just a bunch of monsters. It sucks when you don't have a story that you're trying to complete, and this time you don't even have the tiny hub world to walk around in like in 2005. Second, for some reason you can't forfeit a game until after the 10th turn, which is really dumb. I dunno if that's how the game works in real life, but it's stupid here. If I want to quit a match early I should be able to. The last thing was that I wish there was a way to undo a mistake you make while playing, with such a complicated game sometimes it's easy to make dumb mistakes that wouldn't be an issue in the actual game.

Back to my list

[mizzach86]

8.   Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (3DS)
I have played and finished the original Luigi’s Mansion back in the GameCube era and just recently played through this sequel. It expands on the original in every way. It’s much longer, there’s a more involved plot, boss fights, secrets and collectibles, post-game content, and even multiplayer.

The gameplay in this game is very rewarding. You need to flash ghosts with the flashlight and then suck them up with the vacuum (ahem, Poltergust) to capture them, however ghosts can defend against this in various ways and different kinds of ghosts can be trickier to execute this process on. It takes some skill to master the game’s mechanics which keeps you more engaged.

I also liked the fact that you go to different worlds (or rather mansions) to vary the locales you play in, each with their own distinctive environmental hazards and ghost trickeries. Also, there is a lot of replay value in the form of finding all the collectibles and secrets along the way and achieving the highest rank in each mission. And doing this will take some perseverance. This is one Nintendo game I think is challenging to complete 100%.

I have two minor gripes with this game. First of all, the mission system is a little unnecessary. Basically, when you get to a certain, unannounced event in each mission, E. Gadd will pull you back to the lab and the mission is over. In a game that is very exploration based, this can be kind of annoying when you want to continue exploring and E. Gadd yanks you out of the stage right as you’ve discovered something new.

Secondly, the collectibles in this game can be very trolly. Some are just hard and take sharp, gaming senses to find (which is perfectly OK with me), but there are a few that are hidden in really idiotic places with no indication something is there. I don’t like using guides to finish games, but I had to with this one.

I am glad that Luigi has his own series and has become more than just an alternate character in the Mario series, not that that’s a bad thing.

[kamikazekeeg]

38 - Resident Evil 4 (PC 2014) - BEAT - Been awhile since I've beaten this.  I had originally beaten it a bunch on Gamecube and PS2, but after not liking the Wii version, I never really got around to another full run.  Been waiting for an interesting reason on PC, which thankfully was an awesome full HD overhaul for the game through a mod. Looks great.  Not 100% finished yet, but the majority of it is, at least most of the noticeable stuff.

Still a quality game.  Some stuff hasn't aged super well, like the controls are way better than default Resident Evil, but they have their own quirks.  The first time the series had real good gameplay wasn't till like RE6, which is kinda the only good thing about that game lol.  The writing and dialogue is way worse than I remember lol It's so awful and goofy, which is an RE trademark, but still hilariously bad. 

It's interesting having just beaten RE1 Remake not that long ago and seeing the differences between the old and the new (For the time).  I like REmake for the exploration and more puzzly aspects, while RE4 is best for its gameplay.  It's such a shame that it took them till RE7 for them to go "Hey, we can have both good gameplay and a quality horror survival experience!" RE2 Remake really looks like the best of both worlds and I'm crazy hyped for its potential.

Kinda it for RE games right now...I don't know if I'm really going to go back to RE5 (It's still a good game) or RE6 (Never finished all the campaigns, but man...that game...).  For now though, I mostly just hit on the ones I really wanted to play before RE2 Remake comes out...Maybe I'll do another Resident Evil 7 run.  Love that game.

[telly]

Extra Game 2 – Earthbound (SNESc) – 32 hours

So after I got my SNES classic last winter I wanted to play through Earthbound a second time, even though I already beat it a couple years ago. I’ll post a link to my post in that thread, but I wanted to provide an “updated” review here. Overall I still think this is a great game, though I do this it’s still slightly overrated, and from what I remember of Mother 3 I still think I like that game more. Another long review coming!

+

• The quirky, weird and strange locations and situations you find yourself in are still fun to experience even after having already played through the game before. I was still really looking forward to going through Moonside, Magicant and fighting Giygas. It’s part of what gives this game it’s unique style. The whole game being in a modern setting as opposed to fantasy still feels fresh and interesting.
• This time around I really got into the translation and localization of the game, which I can really appreciate now upon playing it a second time. I was reading Tomato’s translation notes online and I also bought the Legends of Localization book, so after I finished an area I would read those notes to learn about the localization. Seeing the choices and changes that were made when compared to the Japanese version gave me a lot of appreciation for how much work it took to keep the game quirky and funny and make it relatable to North American players. I feel like this was one of the first games to get a really serious localization attempt and it really makes the game that much better, because it could have been seriously mishandled. It’s fascinating.
• The music is fantastic, and is one thing that I prefer over Mother 3
• I barely had to do any grinding, which is always great. The only time I had to grind was in Threed when I got Paula. Granted, I didn’t run away from many battles. The auto-fight and auto-win in the game is a nice touch too
• The game has a lot of humor in the dialogue, secondary characters, and the enemies you fight. It all fits really nicely with the general vibe of the game.

-

• I still have a lot of problems with the story. Setting aside the fact that it’s your standard cliché “collect 8 artifacts to save the world” structure, half the game is just going from town to town to solve the isolated (albeit entertaining) problems that the people are having at that time, and then… on to the next area! It’s very disconnected and most of it is caused by the Mani-Mani statue, not Giygas. On that note, I also have a problem with Giygas himself. I’ve never liked how little influence the main villain plays in the game, and he has far too much mystery to me for it to be entertaining. Some people like that because it means you can make up your own story of Giygas, but that just feels really unsubstantial to me. I can’t get excited about my own supplemental opinions that may or may not be real, and it’s obvious that Giygas is very barebones and it requires fan speculation to even be remotely interesting, and I think that’s a knock against it.
• The four main characters are absolutely soulless. I swear, throughout the entire game, Ness and crew maybe say a total of 20 lines of dialogue. Could you imagine if the main characters in FF6 only said 20 lines? As a result they literally have no personality, and are emotionless fighting machines for 90% of the game. They only get some characterization when they are first introduced, then nothing afterward.
• Out of all the outdated game mechanics and clunky menus, my biggest problem was the limited inventory. You only have 14 spaces, and 4 of them are already taken up by your equipment! Ness also has several items that you have to have, like the Sound Stone, Receiver Phone, ATM card, and arguably the Town Map and Franklin Badge. Even with four characters I was still having trouble with inventory. It’s not that I don’t like limited inventory, but the issue is that your bag space was not adjusted to accommodate the slew of items you can pick up in the overworld.
• The beginning of this game is really rough. The limited inventory combined with the fact that your characters miss their attacks half the damn time means that the beginning is frustratingly hard. I’d also say that the game doesn’t get truly “interesting” until you get to Happy-Happy village, which is a solid 5 hours in.

Old Earthbound review

Back to my list

[/list] <- every time I do bullets this dumb thing appears and I can't get rid of it

[justin8301]

A couple more to add to the list.

15. Captain Toad Treasure Tracker (Switch) - 7/31/18
16. Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition (PS4) - 8/3/18

I was REALLY disappointed with FFXV. I read reviews and saw peoples complaints about this game, but usually I tend to overlook things people point out in reviews, or sometimes I'm just completely oblivious to the flaws... But this game was just not good... The side quest were what just killed it for me, they really served no purpose other than filler. I get they were trying to innovate and move from the mindless grinding of random mobs to something more modern, but these quests were just go kill X of these, or go collect X of these.. it almost felt like playing an MMO... As a long time Final Fantasy fan I'm glad that I played it, but I cant see myself giving this another play though and I certainly can't recommend it to anyone else...

[bikingjahuty]

One of the lengthier reviews I've written for a game. Getting close to the coveted 52 mark


49. Gran Turismo 4 (PS2): Gran Turismo 4 was the last great game in the series imo. I sunk countless hours into this game when it first came out and again around the time Gran Turismo 5 came out, which is when I last played this game extensively. Sadly, revisiting Gran Turismo 4 thirteen years after it came out proved to be sobering and difficult. For one, I am not nearly as into cars as I was when this game first came out, or even as much as I was nearly a decade ago. I bought a really nice sports car during my senior year of college and I quickly realized on public roads it didn't matter if I had 90hp or 300hp, it was all the same when it came to traffic, speed limited, and traffic laws. This greatly diminished my love and interest for cars, which was a huge driving force for why I loved this game so much when I was younger. The second big blow to my enjoyment of this game is something that I'm sure sports game enthusiasts run into with older titles in series like Madden or NHL; playing with rosters of characters that have been retired for a decade or longer, or players that no longer belong to certain teams just isn't as fun as playing what's current. Gran Turismo 4 is similar in a way in that every single car you are racing in that game is old now, even the cars that were new or newer when the game first came out. Don't get me wrong, I love a ton of the now classic cars in this game, but not having cars like the Nissan GTR, Toyota FRS, or C7 Corvette is a real bummer and ages this game quite a bit. With that out of the way I will now start talking about the game itself. First off the graphics in Gran Turismo 4 still hold up really well mostly and it is one of the best looking games on the PS2 by far. At the time I can't say any racing game looked as amazing and it truly is a statement that it still looks good in 2018. Also, the gameplay is very sharp and feels like a true racing sim without any sort of arcadish feel, other than the total absence of vehicle damage. I also enjoy the progression system in this one a lot more than any GT game that followed. Sadly, the sound department is where this game sucked back in 2005 and still sucks today. The car sounds do not match up at all, some even sounding like household appliances rather than fast sports cars. Also, the in race music is terrible, like generic, unlicensed, amateur rock band terrible. The menu music is really good however and keeps me from completely bashing this game's OST. Overall, I still enjoy playing Gran Turismo 4, but playing it now is difficult for me the reasons mentioned above, which is a shame because I thought this game would always hold up for me. (8/7/18) [36/50]

[justin8301]

Finished a couple more

17. Metroid Zero Mission (GBA) - 8/5/18
18. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (PS4) - 8/7/18


Hellblade was the first digital only game I specifically bought with the intention of playing lol. All my other digital games are just either stuff from PS+ or came from codes in physical games.

[kamikazekeeg]

41 - Mega Man X2 - Switch 2018) - BEAT - I was kinda unimpressed by this one.  Like there was an element or two that bugged me with X1, but overall, it really reminded how much I love X compared to the original games. 

X2 doesn't feel like the step up it should be.  You get the Maverick Hunters in fights that aren't fun at all, the ending levels are just tedious, they reverted back to having the boss gauntlet room, and more than a few fights just seem like sub tank spam.  With X1, I loved that certain levels would affect others, and the ending levels were scattered with bosses, so it was less of just fighting a bunch at once.  Another annoying thing is that if you start the final levels and then maybe go back to the normal levels to get a heart or tank, you lose your progress on those levels.  That was in both games and I hate it.  Just give them their own selection options!

It's not a bad game at all, it's still got that gameplay and there are some good levels and bosses, but I felt like as a sequel, it was just abit underwhelming.

[ignition365]

41 - Mega Man X2 - Switch 2018) - BEAT - I was kinda unimpressed by this one.  Like there was an element or two that bugged me with X1, but overall, it really reminded how much I love X compared to the original games. 

X2 doesn't feel like the step up it should be.  You get the Maverick Hunters in fights that aren't fun at all, the ending levels are just tedious, they reverted back to having the boss gauntlet room, and more than a few fights just seem like sub tank spam.  With X1, I loved that certain levels would affect others, and the ending levels were scattered with bosses, so it was less of just fighting a bunch at once.  Another annoying thing is that if you start the final levels and then maybe go back to the normal levels to get a heart or tank, you lose your progress on those levels.  That was in both games and I hate it.  Just give them their own selection options!

It's not a bad game at all, it's still got that gameplay and there are some good levels and bosses, but I felt like as a sequel, it was just abit underwhelming.

I just finished X2 the other day and between every of the 5 final stages I went back to bubble crabs level to fill up my sub-tanks and that didn't erase my progress.

[kamikazekeeg]

41 - Mega Man X2 - Switch 2018) - BEAT - I was kinda unimpressed by this one.  Like there was an element or two that bugged me with X1, but overall, it really reminded how much I love X compared to the original games. 

X2 doesn't feel like the step up it should be.  You get the Maverick Hunters in fights that aren't fun at all, the ending levels are just tedious, they reverted back to having the boss gauntlet room, and more than a few fights just seem like sub tank spam.  With X1, I loved that certain levels would affect others, and the ending levels were scattered with bosses, so it was less of just fighting a bunch at once.  Another annoying thing is that if you start the final levels and then maybe go back to the normal levels to get a heart or tank, you lose your progress on those levels.  That was in both games and I hate it.  Just give them their own selection options!

It's not a bad game at all, it's still got that gameplay and there are some good levels and bosses, but I felt like as a sequel, it was just abit underwhelming.

I just finished X2 the other day and between every of the 5 final stages I went back to bubble crabs level to fill up my sub-tanks and that didn't erase my progress.

I beat two of the levels and realized I'd need all the sub tanks and hearts to get through, so I went to the levels and then when I went back to Sigma's base, I had to start from the beginning again.  Same thing happened in MMX1 for me.  I didn't see like an option to pick another part of the base or anything.

[ignition365]

41 - Mega Man X2 - Switch 2018) - BEAT - I was kinda unimpressed by this one.  Like there was an element or two that bugged me with X1, but overall, it really reminded how much I love X compared to the original games. 

X2 doesn't feel like the step up it should be.  You get the Maverick Hunters in fights that aren't fun at all, the ending levels are just tedious, they reverted back to having the boss gauntlet room, and more than a few fights just seem like sub tank spam.  With X1, I loved that certain levels would affect others, and the ending levels were scattered with bosses, so it was less of just fighting a bunch at once.  Another annoying thing is that if you start the final levels and then maybe go back to the normal levels to get a heart or tank, you lose your progress on those levels.  That was in both games and I hate it.  Just give them their own selection options!

It's not a bad game at all, it's still got that gameplay and there are some good levels and bosses, but I felt like as a sequel, it was just abit underwhelming.

I just finished X2 the other day and between every of the 5 final stages I went back to bubble crabs level to fill up my sub-tanks and that didn't erase my progress.

I beat two of the levels and realized I'd need all the sub tanks and hearts to get through, so I went to the levels and then when I went back to Sigma's base, I had to start from the beginning again.  Same thing happened in MMX1 for me.  I didn't see like an option to pick another part of the base or anything.

It didn't let me pick a part of the base.  I beat Stage 1, went to Armor Armadillo's level to fill up my subtanks, quit the level, and went and did Stage 2, etc.

In X2 I did Stage 1, went to Bubble Crabs stage to fill my sub-tanks, quit the level, and went and did Stage 2.

In X3, I just did Stage 1, went to Tunnel Rhino's stage and filled my sub-tanks, quit the level, and now I'm gonna go do Stage 2.