Games Beaten 2017

[marurun]

I can't entirely agree, though i can see why you might prefer Mega. 93 does have a certain charm to it that endears it to the Bomberman community.

[Blu]

1. Runbow - Wii U
2. Battlefield 1 - Xbox One
3. Until Dawn - PS4
4. Super Mario Sunshine - Gamecube
5. Titanfall 2 - Xbox One
6. Wario Ware, Inc: Mega Party Game$ - Gamecube
7. Pikmin 2 - Gamecube
8. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Wii U

What can I possibly write about this game that truly does it justice? It simply needs to be experienced. There's so much I love. The combat is fantastic. The music adds just the right amount of ambiance. The Dragon Roost Isle remix is incredible, and Zora strikes up nice warm memories. Its character development is top notch. Zelda coming to terms with her destiny and she lives into her potential in an amazing way that had me in awe. The world simply lets you do what you'd like, and it feels like overworld that feels on par with OoT and LttP. The climbing is such a game changer and truly encourages exploration. The difficulty early on posed quite a challenge, but it tends to become quite easier as you progress, which is fine with me. If you're going to be the Hero of Courage, it's fitting that you're powering up through your journey. I LOVED the ending.

This was the best possible swansong I could have asked for as I say farewell to the Wii U.
This is hands down my game of the year. Thanks for knocking this one out of the park Nintendo. <3 10/10!

[Exhuminator]

13. Unity.Rogue3D | Android | roguelike | 2015 | 2hrs | 7/10

Here's an Android based game about a young woman seeking recipes in a dangerous tower. Yes, recipes, as in food cooking instructions. For some reason these recipes are hidden away in a tower full of monsters and traps. Your goal is to guide her to said recipes safely, avoiding traps and killing the monsters, while collecting ever better equipment and beneficial consumables. Once a recipe is found, you must escape the tower with it alive. Doing so won't be simple, you'll need solid tactics and a solid dose of plain ol' good luck.



If you've played a roguelike, Unity.Rogue3D will be immediately familiar. This genre piece really does nothing innovative with its inspiration to speak of. However, Unity.Rogue3D does excel at being a competent and polished roguelike. Such competence is fairly rare in this genre actually, especially in the realm of proper balancing. Unity.Rogue3D is extremely well balanced, and never puts the player in a completely unfair situation. You're given ample supplies and consistent treasure, which if used wisely will save the day. Every time you leave the tower alive with a recipe, you essentially beat the game. But the more recipes you successfully recover, the more outfits you can unlock for the heroine over time.



Aside from being a well made roguelike, Unity.Rogue3D is also easy to look at. Graphics are consistently appealing, with appropriate sound in tow. The user interface may appear cluttered, but the informative GUI proves useful despite that. Controls are intuitive and easy to learn, even though the translation is rather Engrish overall. I wasn't expecting much from a 99¢ roguelike, but I was pleasantly surprised. Unity.Rogue3D isn't the most difficult roguelike you'll ever play, but it might be one of the few you bother finishing.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... udio.rogue

[Fragems]

1. VVVVVV (Vita)
2. Firewatch (PS4)
3. Watchdogs (PS4) replay
4. Watchdogs 2 (PS4)
5. Adr1ft (PS4)
6. Call of Duty Infinite Warfare (PS4)
7. Mirror's Edge Catalyst (PS4)

Mirror's Edge Catalyst

This game is quite the disappointment. Wasn't expecting a ton going in but I expected at least some interesting expansion on the Mirrors Edge universe. However this game fails to even pull that off. What we get instead is an open world collectathon with poor level design, poor direction, a story which doesn't feel like it could plausibly connect with the first game, and crappy half assed new mechanics. Avoid this game even at $10 I still feel really let down .

If you are a fan of Mirrors Edge just pretend this game doesn't exist it. It's pretty clear that they wanted to make another game after this one or just abandoned this game for other projects because the ending doesn't connect up with Mirror's Edge at all and ends on a rather disappointing anticlimax with a shitload of plot holes all over the place. I'd say 90% of the characters simply disappear without having their story wrapped up and one character from Mirrors Edge is in a position which totally makes no sense and completely breaks the continuity since this is supposed to be a prequel. The last level is also a complete mess with even the opening cutscene being a bugged mess with the AI bots in the building skating around with no animation .

[MrPopo]

The game was a reboot of the story. Expecting it to link up was setting yourself up for disappointment.

[dsheinem]

Games Beaten 2017
Inside - PS4
Street Fighter V - PS4
TIMEframe - PC
Rituals - PC
Mother Russia Bleeds - PC
Horizon: Zero Dawn - PS4
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Switch *new*

Total: 7

Previously: 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

What this game accomplishes from both a design standpoint and from a sheer "fun factor" standpoint is nearly unparalleled. I can easily say that it is, at least as of this moment, a game that I consider:

the best Switch game ever
the best Wii U game ever
the best Zelda game ever
the best Nintendo-made game ever
...and probably one of the top 10 best video games ever made

I don't know if Nintendo will ever again create the kinds of innovative games that have the same level of long-term influence as their most revered 8-bit and 16-bit titles (something I've brought up in the past (in a loooong discussion))...but this is arguably the closest they have gotten to that high water mark since that time. The way that it blends open-world dynamics with a lot of classic Zelda gameplay and design is really astonishing, and I enjoyed every minute of the 60+ hours I spent on this game (I did all 4 guardians, about 40 shrines, got the master sword, and did a fair amount of the work needed for the full ancient armor set). There's still a lot of this game to go back to, also - I would guess easily as much time can be spent doing sidequests and the rest of the shrines as I spent so far.

Bring on the DLC!

...now on to Mass Effect: Andromeda (I have played only an hour so far). I also need to spend some time outside of "long-game land"

[Fragems]

The game was a reboot of the story. Expecting it to link up was setting yourself up for disappointment.

So it was a reboot? I thought it was pitched as a prequel for ages?

I see now that changed last minute wtf EA . No wonder the story was complete shit.

[Blu]

I agree with you on all of your points Dave. It's about as close as Nintendo has been to their 8/16 bit games of the past. I felt like we finally had a nonlinear over world that was more about exploration. That was sorely missing in Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess. I loved virtually every aspect of it, even the weapon breaking was fine because I hardly was without a weapon as the game went on.

Bring on the DLC!

[ElkinFencer10]

I actually finished this game Friday, but it took me until today to get the review written and my screenshots uploaded.

Games Beaten in 2017 So Far - 28

January (10 Games Beaten)

1. Persona 4 Arena - Playstation 3 - January 1
2. Chrono Trigger - SNES - January 7
3. Ys: The Vanished Omens - Master System - January 8
4. MUSHA - Genesis - January 10
5. Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below - PlayStation 4 - January 11
6. Ys I - TurboGrafx-CD - January 13
7. Ys II - TurboGrafx-CD - January 14
8. Dragon Quest Builders - PlayStation 4 - January 23
9. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - PlayStation 4 - January 26
10. School Girl/Zombie Hunter - PlayStation 4 - January 29

February (12 Games Beaten)

11. Fire Emblem Heroes - Android - February 3
12. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD - Wii U - February 5
13. Dante's Inferno - PlayStation 3 - February 7
14. Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - DS - February 11
15. Persona 4: Dancing All Night - Vita - February 12
16. Sniper Elite 4 - PlayStation 4 - February 17
17. Pony Quest - NES - February 19
18. Halo Wars 2 - Xbox One - February 22
19. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions - PlayStation Portable - February 24
20. Hotline Miami - PlayStation 4 - February 26
21. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light - Famicom - February 27
22. Bad Dudes - NES - February 28

March (6 Games Beaten)

23. Root Letter - PlayStation 4 - March 2
24. Vroom in the Night Sky - Switch - March 10
25. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Switch - March 17
26. Super Bomberman R - Switch - March 18
27. Super Mario Run - Android - March 24
28. I Am Setsuna - Switch - March 24

28. I Am Setsuna - Switch - March 24



I Am Setsuna is the first game made by Tokyo RPG Factory, a development team created by Square Enix to focus solely on producing role playing games. For a first effort, I Am Setsuna is an extremely impressive experience. What first drew me to the game was the art style; the game has an almost watercolor aesthetic that's absolutely beautiful and the type of artistic flair that I rarely see in video games.



At the core of the gameplay is your standard JRPG. There's not much in the way of frills or groundbreaking new innovations. It uses an active battle system, so it plays a lot like a modern Chrono Trigger, and as anyone who's played that game knows, anything that makes you feel like Chrono Trigger is a good thing. You assemble a party of seven characters over the course of your journey - mine were named Bhutseks, Samus Aran, Zelda, Cronoxilla, Mr. Popo, KeyGlyph, and Buttz - each of whom have their own focus and uses, leading to some diverse strategic options.



The story is a mostly generic JRPG narrative with a slight variation. You, of course, are accompanying a "chosen one" - Setsuna (or, in my game, Samus Aran) - on a quest to quell a surge in monster attacks and save the world. Your main player character is from a tribe of mercenaries who always wear masks. I guess they're from Halloween Town or something, I don't know. It never explains why they always wear masks (or, if they did, I wasn't paying attention). Anyway, story elements happen, and you're part of Setsuna's guard to protect her on her journey to the Lost Lands to offer herself as sacrifice to appease the monster gods or whatever. I don't want to explain much more than that because, while not the most original thing in the world, the story is very well told, and it would be doing a disservice to spoil any of it.



The art directions really steals the show here, though. The whole world is covered in snow, and that snow-covered landscape gives the game a fairly unique feel as far as 2D JRPGs go. You keep expecting the environment to change - we've become accustomed to a variety of biomes in games - but start to finish, the world is a winter painting. The visuals have an almost watercolor quality that make the game really stand out. I cannot stress how beautiful this game is. Playing on Switch, I was playing at 720p30 instead of 1080p60 on PC and PS4, but the game's art style isn't so realistic that the drop in resolution makes a huge difference (especially when that 720p is on a small handheld screen). A 60 FPS frame rate, I must admit, would have been nice, but the 30 FPS on Switch is consistent with no dips that I saw, and as we all know, a consistent frame rate is always better than one that fluctuates.



I Am Setsuna is a fantastic RPG experience. For Tokyo RPG Factory's first product as a new team, it's fantastic, and it has me eagerly awaiting their next project. It doesn't break new ground for the genre, but what it does, it does very well. It has the feel of an indie game (a good one, not that dime-a-dozen pixelated shit) despite being published by a huge company and developed by a team owned and created by a JRPG juggernaut. In addition to Switch, it's available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and PC, so most folks have a platform on which they can play it. It's not a "masterpiece," but it's an amazing experience nonetheless that I absolutely recommend to all JRPG fans.

[alienjesus]

1. 3D Power Drift 3DS
2. Maze Hunter 3-D 3DS
3. Hyrule Warriors Legends 3DS
4. Icarus Proudbottom's World of Typing Weekly PC
5. Paper Mario N64
6. Catherine PS3
7. Glover N64
8. Blast Corps N64
9. Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together! Switch eShop
10. Pullblox 3DS eShop *NEW*

Pullblox

Pullblox (known as Pushmo stateside) is an puzzle platformer game for 3DS. It was developed by Intelligent Systems (of Fire Emblem, Advance Wars and Paper Mario fame) and is the first in a series which includes Fallblox and Fullblox on 3DS (Crashmo and Stretchmo in the US) and Pullblox World on Wii U (Pushmo World in the US).



The game features your rotund sumo-like character pulling...'blox' (who'd have thought it !?) to create a path up to the goal, where a child needs to be rescued. Blocks are fixed in place on both the X and Y axis, but can be pulled forwards towards the screen up to 3 squares in order to create steps. You can only pull a block as far as you have footing, although if you can grab them from the side you can pull them out that way too to extend them further. Blocks are made up of colours, so any connected colours will form one shape which can be pulled.



In addition to the basic blocks there are some 'devices' which can be used to navigate the puzzle. Manholes are basically teleporters which you can use to go between two points on a puzzle, but certain blocks will need to be moved and pulled out first to make sure the manhole is uncovered and not blocked. Pullout switches are arrows which when jumped on, will make all blocks of the same colour as the arrow move out the full 3 steps. Sometimes these are tricks, which is just mean. You can rewind quite a while in time though to undo moves you've made in error, and there's a reset button for puzzles if you really screw up.



Pushmo is quite a fun romp early on when the going is easy, and it makes you feel pretty clever as you solve increasingly hard puzzles. Many of the levels are just made up of abstract shapes, although the most fun levels are typically the ones which make up pixel sprite work of an object. These are strangely underrepresented though, which is a shame. The game features a full level editor where you can create your own puzzles, and then share them in the form of a QR code to another player.



Unfortunately, the joy of Pullblox eluded me as I progressed further and further, and some of the puzzles got exceedingly complicated and frustrating to solve. There are over 200 stages in the main game here, and I was sick of them by the time I finished them all. There is an option to skip a stage, although I never used it, so I don't know how often it can be used or if the ending is gated in some way.



Pullblox is an interesting, well executed and nicely presented idea, but I feel that really, your mileage will vary on this one. Anyone can get some satisfaction out of the first half of the game or so, but beyond that you need to have a certain type of mindset (which I lack) or a masochistic streak (which I apparently don't lack...) to find enjoyment in the harder stages. If you love stuff like the Adventures of Lolo series, you'll probably like this. It's good, but it's an acquired taste.