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Games Beaten in 2016 So Far - 94

January (20 Games Beaten)


February (8 Games Beaten)


March (8 Games Beaten)


April (13 Games Beaten)


May (6 Games Beaten)


June (13 Games Beaten)


July (7 Games Beaten)


August (15 Games Beaten)


September (4 Games Beaten)


94. Assault Suit Leynos - PS4 - September 8



Assault Suit Leynos is not a long game by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a fun game. It's not an easy game once you get towards the end, but it is an accessible game. Because this game took me only 2 hours or so to beat, I'm not going to have a whole great deal to share about it, but as it kind of flew under the radar for the most part, I want to give it a quick plug here.



This game is a straight remake of the Genesis original (called Target Earth in North America). Fortunately it didn't get the censorship treatment this time around (you get to see your BFF burn to a crisp in the atmosphere in this release). Now I've never actually played Target Earth, so I can't compare the two. I did, however, get a good bit of enjoyment out of this remake. You've got three difficulties from which to choose - Easy, Normal, and Hard - and it's forgiving with the extra lives (in that they're infinite). There are also checkpoints spread relatively liberally throughout the levels, so if you die after beating a sub-boss, you can start up after that boss. This is ESPECIALLY helpful on the last level which has six sub-bosses, then the final boss, then an additional three phase sub-boss just to fuck with you.



There are eight stages in the game, and the last level is a BITCH. Even on easy it kicked my ass up and down the street. I mean, granted, I'm bad at video games, but still, it's hard as shit, man. I'll briefly break down why it's tough in the spoiler tag for those interested.





It's a worthwhile game for those who enjoy horizontal arcade shooters, especially with its $20 price tag. There's not an enormous amount of content or replay value, but it is super cool to see a remake of a 26 year old Genesis game get a retail release on the PlayStation 4.

99. Baroque|PS2|2008|roguelike|2h 35m|7/10



Baroque is one of the oddest games I've ever played. If David Lynch and Keiichiro Toyama made a roguelike, this would be it. Sure you've got typical trappings like randomly generated levels, constantly depleting health, and tremendous odds stacked against the player... but it's just so damned weird. The longer you play Baroque, the less sense it makes. If you're the kind of person who enjoys unraveling mysteries, you'll have your work cut out for you here.



You start off as a nameless amnesiac wandering a techno industrial dystopian world, who is told by an angel to descend to the bottom of the "neuro tower" and well, kill god, apparently. Along the way you meet all sorts of random NPCs, who tell you utterly insane things, and you kill monsters that are even stranger than the NPCs themselves. You find loot, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and continue to try and reach the bottom. Of course you probably won't reach the bottom on your first try, or your tenth even. Thankfully you can hard save at each floor transition, making continuing your progress a simple affair.



Inevitably you will die and be "reborn" at the beginning of the neuro tower again, sans all experience points and items. Except now, NPC dialogue changes, which means the story is slowly revealed as you constantly die and become reborn. However, reaching the bottom of the neuro tower and dealing with god only gives you one possible ending. You'll have to reach the bottom of the neuro tower multiple times, and fulfill a bunch of crazy objectives in order to get the "true ending". Most people won't be patient enough to reach the bottom of the neuro tower even once, let alone four times. I reached the bottom of the tower once, killed god, and got a weird ending. Then I reloaded my save, touched god, and got a different and even weirder ending. Alrighty then.



Let's say you forgot about the story, and its obviously artificially contrived longevity design, and just focus on the gameplay. Well, if you enjoy roguelikes in real time, you'll have some fun. Baroque has a unique atmosphere both graphically and aurally, with NPC and creature design that is utterly bizarre. Its gameplay is less bizarre, and truthfully its rather derivative of better roguelikes. The sooner you realize combat is less important than strategic item use and evasion, the sooner you'll reach the bottom of the neuro tower alive.



A lot of mainstream reviewers proclaimed Baroque was super difficult, if not impossible. I'm here to to tell you that's a bunch of nonsense. On normal difficulty, I found Baroque to be only moderately challenging. For a roguelike it's really quite simple, and compared to something like Shadow Tower, honestly Baroque is a joke. The only truly hard thing about Baroque is making any sense of its plot, and being willing to endure massive repetition to get the "true ending". And in that sense, the name "baroque" is genius. One meaning of the word is "having many details or too many details", and that describes this game's plot perfectly. Baroque is not a bad game, it's actually pretty fun to play. But it's a really terrible way to tell a complicated tale.

My guess is that it's more "opaque", which can lead to difficulty. If you suss things out quickly enough, the challenge dissolves.

I've got this on Wii, at some point I should try it out again. So. Many. Games.

As I recall there were some extremely nasty status effects as you got deeper. It quickly turned into a game of figuring out how to get from point A to point B while dodging as much as possible in between.

The "lust" status effect was pretty funny. It causes all enemies and items to appear as beautiful women. This is a problem since you can't differentiate between anything, but it was amusing.

So what depth did you end up getting to (not counting the full -99999 level) before you hung it up?

Just finished Twilight Princess HD. God I'm glad it's over, I couldn't take any more of the retarded characters. Beat the cave of ordeals on the first go, it wasn't that hard even after I accidentally took my health potion to heal one heart!

MrPopo wrote:So what depth did you end up getting to (not counting the full -99999 level) before you hung it up?

I think it was cu1600, or whatever depth it is where you can get your first ending by interacting with "god". I'm aware I got a bad ending, and not the true ending, and I'm okay with that. I feel like I got my money out of my first run of the neuro tower, even if subsequent runs go deeper.

Oh yeah, you barely started the game's story. The 400k FAQ on Gamefaqs has a good step-by-step for finishing the storyline of the game. It took me quite a while to get through because of getting bad dungeon layouts or not getting the drops I required.

MrPopo wrote:Oh yeah, you barely started the game's story.

While I enjoyed the gameplay, honestly I'd prefer this game's plot told through an anime.