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bold games are games that have been beaten, previously beaten, or are unbeatable.
22.
Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin (X1)
I started playing this, by myself, because my wife's cousin doesn't remember much about this game. But then I played while he was around and he started guiding me. I can't recall the area where I'm at and what it's called. The game reminds me of Demon's Souls, much more so than Dark Souls. A lot about it screams Demon's Souls. It feels much easier for me than Dark Souls was, but I'm still getting my butt kicked. The game does seem to have a bit of an issue with how long it takes for your character to raise their shield, which causes some issues, and sometimes the enemies animations and movements will behave erratically. Sometimes I'll think I'm outside of their AoA, but then their entire character model will rotate in place by 45 degrees, not move, rotate like magic, and then they will hit me. What's the point of such a game if the enemies can always basically teleport to be facing you. Same thing goes with their shields when they want to block. I have also died several times from enemies entirely missing me, and I have no animation of me getting attacked, but I still take damage and die. I mean, a big boss slams his foot down 5-10 feet away from me and the dust that kicks up kills me. I don't know. I'm taking a break for a while. Jumped back into this game, doing a lot of stuff in No Man's Wharf right now, jumped up at least 15 levels yesterday alone. Got a pretty badass great sword and upgraded it to +4 or +5, so it does nearly 300 base damage. Played this like crazy for a week or 2 and now I'm at level 80 something and I have a weapon that does 500+ damage. Wife's cousin came over so I decided to start playing this again, at this point I was at level 97 or something. Played through with some guidance and managed to get up to like level 140 and finished the game.
Rating: Great, challenging experience. Not for the weak. Highly recommended.
23.
Fire Emblem: Heroes (Android)
Nice little small Fire Emblem mobile game. Plays fairly well, seems totally playable without the micro transactions. I've heard some stories of folks spending $1000 on it and not getting the character they want, so that kind of concerns me. I've spent no money, but I've used the material that you would otherwise buy, and I have not yet been able to get the few characters I would like to have. I've seen a lot of people complain that it is too simple and that any true Fire Emblem fan will be insulted by this game or that any newcomer would think that Fire Emblem is stupid, I guess I see that, but I kind of enjoy the game. Finished the final chapter. Nothing was resolved, no questions answered. Obviously, they released an incomplete game with the intent of releasing the rest of the story down the line to either keep you coming back to play or to charge you for the story. Either way, I now see why most reviewers gave it such a bad score. Can't really recommend this while it is an incomplete experience.
Rating: Pass, for now, once the full game has been released, I'll probably change it to a recommended play.
24.
1-2 Switch! (Switch)
This is one of those unbeatable games, but played it for several hours. Game starts you off with a random game out of the tutorial games. After that you only have access to the 7 or so tutorial games, after playing for a while, they unlock the rest of the games. Some of the games are pretty fun, some are pretty weird. Sneaky dice is pretty good, not knowing what each other has, but trying to screw each other over. The counting marbles one is pretty interesting, but not too difficult. The rotating one got pretty competitive for us, we even tried to find ways to cheat the system, I got so far as 1900 degrees. The wild west shooting games are pretty good too. Didn't play any of the dancing ones or the baby game, but I'm sure we will eventually.
Rating: Kids would definitely like this game, especially in a party atmosphere. Adults might get a kick out of it as well, but again, party atmosphere. Any fewer than 3 players and you won't be playing for long, likely. Definitely not worth MSRP nor 20% off. Pick this one up cheap later on if you are interested.
25.
Legend of Zelda, The: Breath of the Wild (Switch)
I'm going to do my damnedest to keep this whole thing spoiler free. A lot of how the game feels reminds me of Skyward Sword, but in a good way. It feels like a lot of what I wanted Skyward Sword to be. It's pretty damned great. The combat system is a bit different from previous Zelda games, you can't dodge roll anymore, which is a huge bummer, because it was really useful in other games. In this game, you can only jump sideways, so the ability to dodge attacks is much more difficult. On the same note, the combat system and balancing of enemies and the AI used by the enemies is much higher, I feel playing this, that almost any enemy, even a moblin can be huge trouble if you aren't prepared. More than once, I've gone into a fight with a bigger enemy and wind up with them down to little to no health, but I have no weapons to speak of, so I just have to run away or deal 1 damage at a time getting tree branches or something. You can't go fight bigger enemies early on, because you just don't have the ability to deal enough damage before running out of damage dealing options. I defeated one of the more intimidating enemies pretty early on, but it was a lot of being very cheap and strategic on my part, I honestly don't even remember how I did it, because I know I ran out of weapons at some point. I had my first experience with one of the few actually "dungeons" in the game, and I guess I just wasn't ready for the puzzles because I kept getting ahead of where I needed to be or figuring things out the not obvious way. So I applaud the flexibility of the system, but on the other hand, I don't feel like I should be doing things the way I have been doing them to get ahead, feels a little unnatural, but I'm getting the job done. So much about this game gets me laughing about the smallest things. I'm also quite enjoying the ability to just take the system on the go. I've played in the waiting room of a vets office, I've played at a relatives house, it's fantastic, I just wish that Nintendo would sell the docks separately at a lower price. $60 for a dock is ridiculous. I haven't updated this in a while, game is really fun and watching my wife play is showing me that, yes, I have been doing things the hard way a lot of times. Almost every single puzzle has multiple ways to solve it. I'm pretty much at the end of the game at this point, I might do more side stuff rather than just end it, but I may decide to just end it. I just don't know if this game will top Mad Max for game of the year for me. But I won't pass judgment until I finish the game. I'm gonna put this one ahead of Mad Max, only because I recall Mad Max giving me trouble at times, glitches and such. This game was just a wonderful experience all over.
Rating: A really great game by Nintendo, worthy of the praise it has been receiving.
26.
Binding of Isaac, The: Afterbirth+ (Switch)
I may not have 100% beat this game, let alone unlocked all of the endings, but I did get the credits to pop. I'll probably keep playing this game on and off because it genuinely is a fantastic game. This game, the physical version, came with stickers and a physical manual. If Nicalis keeps this up, I will be purchasing every Nicalis game for Switch on release day. Nice little dungeon crawler shooter game. Randomly generated levels, you can grab the seed to generate the dungeons and replay the same dungeon, but even then, the items acquired are random too, so that won't be the same. Obviously it is a really weird game story wise, but gameplay wise, it is a pretty great game. Game does have a lack of depth given how short the "story" is, but the incentive to replay is pretty high, because every successive win gets you a new ending. 20-ish endings in all.
Rating: Highly recommended if you have no issue with the lack of depth.
27.
Fine Sweeper (PC)
One of the games that one of our fine members,metshael, was giving away. I'm sure he still has plenty of codes to give away for various games if you are interested. I'm a fairly big fan of minesweeper, so I jumped at this game. It's pretty basic minesweeper, but they give you hearts for situations where you need to guess to get through a set of tiles, so it is far more forgiving than regular minesweeper in that manner. Overall, this game is a much needed improvement over the original minesweeper, plus it has that achievement leaderboard etc stuff folks really like.
Rating: Recommended if you like minesweeper, if not, oh well.
28.
Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)
I was out and about and was in a Gamestop for a reason or another, and I saw they had this pre-owned, so I figured I'd give it a go and see how I like it. So far, very meh. Once I get a hang of the controls and get into the actual story, I might grow to like the game, but so far, it's pretty bland and boring. As I get older, I'm realizing that games aren't grabbing my attention fast enough. I remember playing Borderlands and that game snatching my interest straight from the intro movie. That's the last game I remember just being totally enthralled from the start... and in retrospect, that game kind of sucked. The game doesn't do much hand holding, so I wasn't aware there was a level up system until I was already level 12 or something, tons of points to spec out. I didn't realize that you can craft a lot of the things you would buy like health potions and such. I was nearly getting ready to give up on the game when my wife looked up and saw that you can get an unlimited fast travel pack. I feel like there is more that I need to learn about this game. Fighting humans is no problem, just headshot them with your bow and arrow. The machines, at least the bigger ones, I find myself hiding behind rocks and pegging them in their weakspots with like 100 arrows. I've yet to learn how to use anything but regular and fire arrows. So as I'm reaching the end of the game I'm learning more and more about the game. I've acquired new weapons, which have made the fights so much easier, plus it unlocks the other ammo types. I've got this game down pretty well and I'm enjoying it very much. So much so, that I've decided to go for the platinum trophy for the game. So far I've missed only one potentially miss-able trophy, but from what I've read, it's not miss-able, so we'll see. I'd really hate for it to be the one trophy that kills the platinum for me. Platinum popped right after the credits, so nice.
Rating: Fantastic game, definitely a contender for GOTY, pretty easy platinum too.
29.
Life is Strange (PS4)
I'm not gonna have a lot to say about this game given that I beat it over a weekend while I wasn't on here to really track my progress. I'm a pretty big fan of time travel sci-fi stuff, so I was surprised with just how much time travel this game has, it's a bit of a spoiler, but this game is way old at this point, your character goes further back in time than the advertised minute or so. The story is pretty great, and some of the characters are pretty memorable. But the problem that basically you decisions in the game come out to 1 single decision that isn't truly affected by any of your choices throughout the game. Say you don't save someone and they die, at the end of the game you make a decision that either lets them live regardless or they die regardless... so it doesn't matter if you saved them 15 times throughout the game, the only definitive decision that decides their fate is right at the end. Trophies are just the combination of 2 things, taking all of the optional pictures and beating the game. Easy Platinum.
Rating: This game is cheap enough at this point and short enough overall that this game is highly recommended, but it is basically an interactive visual novel. Easy Platinum.
30.
Gears of War 4 (X1)
I bought this game shortly after release for like $20. Another Laura Bailey game. I should probably keep a tally of games played in a year with her in it. I've been putting off playing it because I thought maybe I could get my wife to co-op the entire franchise with me. I gave up on that and started playing. She immediately asked if the game does co-op story mode. So maybe we'll play through the games on co-op at some point. We do need a co-op game to start playing, almost done with Snipperclips. I think this game takes place 25 years after GoW3, but if that's the case then JD at best is 24, assuming Marcus knocked Anya up immediately after GoW3. I went in this blind not knowing what the game was about. I was pleasantly surprised with the totalitarian regime created by the COGs, and then not so surprised by the return of the Lambent (or whatever they're called now). Game seems to have a new mechanic that allows fast traversal of obstacles, but it seems very timing sensitive, so it doesn't work great. Weapons are mostly the same with a few new additions, basically same old Gears. New characters are nice and I'm digging the banter between JD and Del, Kait so far isn't as awesome as I was hoping, she seems very Anya so far. Starting to like the characters more and more. I was almost disappointed with the devs for going an obvious route, and poorly executed at that, but they didn't, so it's all good. So got to this one really big monster and fought it... then the game ended. Fairly anti-climactic, emotional sure, but fairly anti-climactic. I expected more with Jinn or at least SOMETHING with the COGS at the end. Just felt very abrupt.
Rating: Story wise, not nearly as good as the original trilogy, but it has some good moments. Gameplay wise, many improvements. Overall, meh, wait for bargain bin if you really want it.
31.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Wii U)
This game is going to show up in my 52 list every single year because it gets played at least once a year and it gets played for quite a while. My wife invited family over for Easter, which turned into having many kids over. One kid had never heard of Super Smash bros. and thought that Samus dude looks pretty cool on the cover. Got to explain that that's a girl. He didn't understand that it is a Nintendo IP fight game, so he was talking about playing as someone from Halo. The entire time we were there all he wanted to do was play Call of Duty, and I had to explain to him over and over that A)I don't own many CoD games, because they generally suck. B)We aren't going to play CoD., C) You aren't going to wreck me at anything. D) If you want to play a shooter, we are going to play Timesplitters. Anyways, we played Smash bros, and this kid (11 year old) plays like a 3 year old, he just jumps off the level and doesn't get what's going on.
Rating: Still a fantastic game.
32.
Yooka-Laylee (PS4)
I finished Gears 4 Friday evening and decided to jump into this one. I went into this with pretty low expectations because it's a Kickstarter game and I've been burned by other big name Kickstarter games. As it is, I was already burned by this project because specifically, I wanted a Wii U copy, and they cancelled it. Honestly, from what I can tell, there was no good reason to cancel it other than that they'd sell more copies on the Switch. The game makes no use of the PS4 touch pad, so I wouldn't expect them to make use of the Wii U Gamepad either, so there's that. So the characters of the game are fairly interesting and memorable, just forgettable bland characters like some other games, so they do have that going for them. The introduction of a stamina bar over using inventory items (read as feathers) is pretty nice, but health items are dual use, eating them gives you health, collecting them fills your stamina bar. So you have to pick and choose. I find even early on, the difficulty for most challenges is very high. There is very little margin for error in most challenges, some have NO margin for error. Most boss fights give you zero recovery items (stamina and health), so you have to basically do a long multi-tier boss fight without getting hit more than a few times. I believe the older games would give you enemies that would drop honey combs, but I could be wrong. Races don't appear to have rubber band mechanics, which is GREAT, like so damned GREAT. Cameras are just as frustrating as the N64 games, they obviously didn't use modern game design when deciding how to implement the camera system. They attempt to shift you from 3D camera mode to isometric or 2D and this causes you to fall and die on many occasions. Length wise, I beat the game in about 2 days. In order to beat the game you have to collect 100/145 Pagies (Jiggies). My end completion was 100/145 Pagies and 901/1010 Quills (Notes). I'm mildly surprised by how short and simplistic this game was, nothing truly innovative or indie about this game. It really feels like if the devs from Rare broke off from Rare and started their own company to create a spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie, but back in 1999. Mind you, this is all actually true, minus the 1999 part. The director of Yooka-Laylee was the lead programmer on Banjo Kazooie, and they have the same artists and composers. What I mean to get at is that, I won't be surprised when someone "demakes" this game into an actual N64 game, because the depth of this title is equivalent to an N64 game. I mean, even a ROM hacker could probably just take Banjo Tooie and just tear it apart and put it back together to make this game.
Rating:If playing a Banjo-Tooie ROM hack sounds like fun, give this a go, otherwise maybe pass on this one. Too much feels too dated. Jokes are funny though... Fucking Trowzer Snake.
33.
Warlock's Tower (PC)
Played this game at PAX South this year and the dev was doing a PWYW on the game, so I gave the dude a fiver and grabbed a code. At the time the game wasn't out yet and he wouldn't say what the retail price was going to be, but he made it sound like the phone version was cheaper yet exactly the same as the PC version, so meh. Simple little puzzle game, get through the room in the allowed number of steps. Minor obstacles and murderous things here and there. Pretty simple, pick up and go type of game. Game is a bit like Witness later on, in that it is helpful to drop the game for a while and come back with fresh eyes. The difficulty really ramped up about halfway through the game. Last section of the tower drops the allowed steps, but basically each one still only has one or so acceptable solutions.
Rating: Pretty fun, pretty tough, really brutal at the end. Not recommended unless you like brutal puzzles.
34.
Hue (PS4)
Neat little platform game that uses color as a platforming/puzzle mechanic. Game is short enough that the puzzles don't get too difficult and the game doesn't tire you out too quickly. Certain objects are certain colors, you can change the background color of the world to match these objects. When they match, they stop existing and you can walk through them and such. Early on, the puzzles are simple easy puzzles, as you progress, the puzzles become more about timing and use platforming mechanics to get through.
Rating: Fun, cheap, quick game. Not much story, no platinum.
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