What Games Have You Completed? (2024 Edition!)
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Join Date:Posts: 50004
- Megaman V (GB)
- Liberation Maiden (3DS)
- The Starship Damrey (3DS)
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
- Doom Eternal (PC)
- System Shock (2023)
- Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS)
- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
- Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways (PC)
- Princess Maker Refine (PC)
- Metal Slug 1st Mission (Neo Geo Pocket Colour)
- Metroid Prime Remaster (Switch)
Metal Slug 1st Mission
Got the new adapter set for the Analogue Pocket so I've been exploring the Neo Geo Pocket library. The NGPC was only out for a couple of months but it left behind a pretty big library of some exceptional games. Metal Slug 1st Mission is a wonderful portable take on the Metal Slug games. The NGPC was never going to recreate the craziness on the arcade game so the developers cleverly crafted a platformer which suited the portable nature of the game. There's 16 stages of run and gun action but you don't progress through them linearly. Instead you can jump to different missions by finding alternative routes through them. Failing some stages also doesn't lead to a game over but an alternative prison stage were you have to avoid traps and are only equipped with a knife. These can also lead to alternative routes.
The game looks amazing, the backgrounds look great and the enemy troops are really well animated and have the personality of the arcade games cannon fodder. There's some massive bosses to tackle. There's a lot of variety in the levels with linear stages interspersed with some fun maze stages and a few vehicle and mini game stages. The sound is a little bit of a let down with the 8-bit renditions of the arcade tunes sounding only ok.
It's a wonderful little handheld game and the only bad thing I can say against it is that the sequel is even better.
Metroid Prime Remaster
Wonderful remaster of a game that still really holds up in this day and age. The modern controls translate to the game perfectly and the updated graphics look incredible while staying true to the original's art design. It looks so good I'm surprised that it runs at a rock solid 60 FPS. It's a fantastic way to experience one of the best games of all time.
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Join Date:Posts: 50004
- Megaman V (GB)
- Liberation Maiden (3DS)
- The Starship Damrey (3DS)
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
- Doom Eternal (PC)
- System Shock (2023)
- Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS)
- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
- Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways (PC)
- Princess Maker Refine (PC)
- Metal Slug 1st Mission (Neo Geo Pocket Colour)
- Metroid Prime Remaster (Switch)
- Valkyria Chronicles 3 (PSP)
Valkyria Chronicles 3
Valkyria Chronicles 3 is a great example of too much of a good thing.
VC3 takes the already great combat of VC2 and refines it further with much better mission design and rebalanced classes. The excellent combat of Valkyria Chronicles has never been better than it is here.
The new story goes back to the event of VC1 with a story parallel to militia squad 7 from VC1. This time it follows a penal unit whose missions and actions have been stricken from official records, think the dirty dozen. It should be an interesting set up but it kind of makes no sense in relation to the events of VC1 and gets bogged down in anime nonsense very quickly. Don't expect the simple well told tale from VC1. Theres also two love interests to decide over and zero chemistry between them. Definitely not a patch on the adorable Welkin and Alicia.
The main issue is that it pulls a FF7 Remake. It's a 30 hour game stretched thin over 80 hours. There's story reason that there's so many missions in the game. VC1 was a relatively brisk SRPG. You'll fight over the same battlefields multiple times. A much better implementation would be a shorter campaign and a more post game content. It's shame that such a good game is slightly tarnished by an easily fixable issue.
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Join Date:Posts: 50004
- Megaman V (GB)
- Liberation Maiden (3DS)
- The Starship Damrey (3DS)
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
- Doom Eternal (PC)
- System Shock (2023)
- Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS)
- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
- Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways (PC)
- Princess Maker Refine (PC)
- Metal Slug 1st Mission (Neo Geo Pocket Colour)
- Metroid Prime Remaster (Switch)
- Valkyria Chronicles 3 (PSP)
- Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley
Snufkin is quite a short game and one that is aimed at kids, although I quite enjoyed how relaxing it is. You control Snufkin as he searches for his friend Moomintroll and meet many characters from the moomin universe. It's quite a condensed open world game with a decent number of side quests scattered around. The game in the action sections is a stealth game where you sneak around parks avoiding the police and vandalising them. There's a message running through the game about how man made scenery just can't match nature.
It's a charming game with a relaxed atmosphere and music. It has a nice papercraft look to the game. There's not a lot challenge people experienced with games but kids would love this. I was a little disappointed that Sigur Ros's involvement only extended to an opening and end credits song but they're both gorgeous music tracks.
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Join Date:Posts: 50004
- Megaman V (GB)
- Liberation Maiden (3DS)
- The Starship Damrey (3DS)
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
- Doom Eternal (PC)
- System Shock (2023)
- Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS)
- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
- Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways (PC)
- Princess Maker Refine (PC)
- Metal Slug 1st Mission (Neo Geo Pocket Colour)
- Metroid Prime Remaster (Switch)
- Valkyria Chronicles 3 (PSP)
- Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley
- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
Elite Beat Agents
EBA might be the best rhythm action game of all time. In fact I can safely say it's one of the all time great videogames. I already knew I'd enjoy the game going into it. EBA was created by Nintendo as an English language version of the Japanese only DS game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!. Ouendan was a rhythm action game with Japanese pop songs that quickly became a massive import hit due to just how good the game was and how easy it was to understand and play without any Japanese. Nintendo tasked the developer Inis to take the same concept and add some well known English language songs to it. Unfortunately EBA didn't meet the sales success Nintendo had hoped for but it was a critical darling.
In Elite Beat Agents you play as a group of male cheerleaders (or female if you unlock the highest difficulty) who travel the globe (and through time) to help people in need through the medium of song and dance. The scenarios are pretty wild ranging from a girl baby sitting and looking of a break so she can ask her boyfriend out, helping Da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa, helping a peanut salesman stop a zombie outbreak to a full on alien invasion by music hating aliens. It's all presented in very attractive and often hilarious animated panels.
EBA is a pretty simple game. You basically use the touch screen to tap along to the music and score on how well you do. There's really only 3 inputs, tapping icons in order, following a rolling ball across the screen and spinning a giant spinner that usually punctuates each song. There's 15 scenarios and 16 songs with a further 3 songs unlocked as you increase your score total. It's pretty easy to get through the game in a few hours with not much difficulty on the initial two difficulties. This however is only training for the two unlockable difficulties. The game really ramps up the difficulty here but so does the satisfaction of getting through some very difficult challenges. The finale of Jumpin' Jack Flash on the hardest difficulties is one of the hardest videogame challenges I've managed to complete and I'd put the satisfaction of finally succeeding up there with putting down Mike Tyson in punchout.
EBA is quite simple a wonderful, wonderful game. There's very little difference from Ouendan other than the tracklist of more recognisable songs. It does make one very important QoL immprovement, the ability to skip the song intro. Anyone that tried to beat Ouendan's finale on the hardest difficulty will get PTSD of the unskippable 30 second intro to Ready Steady Go. If there's one small complaint it's that the tracks are all covers of varying quality rather than the original songs. While the tracklist has a lot of songs that wouldn't be my cup of tea, they all work brilliantly to complement the gameplay even the cheesy stuff.
I guess that's proof of why EBA is one of the best games of all time. It's so good that it gave me a venue where I unironically enjoyed Avril Lavigne's awful Sk8ter Boi. The Last of Us can't compete with that.
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Join Date:Posts: 50004
- Megaman V (GB)
- Liberation Maiden (3DS)
- The Starship Damrey (3DS)
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
- Doom Eternal (PC)
- System Shock (2023)
- Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS)
- Kirby's Adventure (NES)
- Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways (PC)
- Princess Maker Refine (PC)
- Metal Slug 1st Mission (Neo Geo Pocket Colour)
- Metroid Prime Remaster (Switch)
- Valkyria Chronicles 3 (PSP)
- Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley (PC)
- Elite Beat Agents (DS)
- Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Order of Ecclesia is the third and final Castlevania game on the DS. By this stage the team at Konami had perfected their craft with Aria of Sorrow on the GBA and were now trying to inject some variety into their Metroidvania formula.
Supposedly Order of Ecclesia is inspired by Simon's Quest but I feel it's more like a halfway point between traditional Vania and metroidvania. You select areas on a world map and unlock the next area in a linear fashion. Each area is kind of like its own micro-metroidvania. The more linear structure means that the enemies and bosses can be more easily tailored to the players power level at that point. As a result Order of Ecclesia is a far more challenging game than any of the other portable metroidvanias, which can be a bit of a cake walk. Expect to see the game over screen quite a bit.
The main character, Shanoa, uses a glyph system where she can absorb he power of some enemies after defeat to gain unique abilities. Other times she can absorb an enemies attack, gaining a new ability and cancelling the enemies attack. There's plenty of weapon and magic glyphs to play around with but I much rather the soul system of aria/dawn of sorrow.
I was initially put off by this game. Enemies and bosses feel like damage sponges, but once I realised there's an elaborate affinity system the game gets a lot more fun and it quickly became one of my favourite Castlevania games. Even if you miss the metroidvania gameplay, the last stage set in Dracula's castle is sprawling and feels more like the other portable Vanias.
It's a gorgeous looking game, one of the last great pixel art games from a big publisher, with stunning animation and nifty spell and 3D effects. Michiru Yamane returns to do the soundtrack, although she has some help here. It's sounds excellent.
This ould unfortunately be the last Castlevania game from Koji Igarashi and his team. Following this game they would be forced to make the I'll received multiplayer game Harmony of Dissonance from reused assets from their games (it reviewed poorly but it's actually a fantastic multiplayer game, especially on PS3 where is supports couch co-op). Fortunately he left and gave us the excellent Bloodstained.
Post edited by Retr0gamer on
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