Games Beaten 2020

[MrPopo]

1. Elite Dangerous - PC
2. Soldier of Fortune - PC
3. Star Wars: TIE Fighter: Defender of the Empire - PC
4. Star Wars: TIE Fighter: Enemies of the Empire - PC
5. Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter: Balance of Power - PC

XvT came out a few years after TIE Fighter and gave us a multiplayer game where people could finally pit the ships of the Empire against those of the Rebellion in a human vs. human setting, rather than against the CPU with tall odds. Unfortunately, the game took a lot of flak for being pretty much exclusively multiplayer focused; while you could do all the content solo with AI partners it was all based around stand alone missions with no storyline. And all the non-training missions were balanced for teams of humans on each side. Balance of Power is the expansion that seeks to rectify the complaints a bit, and ends up succeeding about halfway.

Balance of Power provides two campaigns that have a running storyline to them which operate in tandem; each tells the story of the ongoing conflict in a particular region of space between the two powers, and you need to play both to see the full story. The final mission for both is somewhat shared; the missions do not have an identical setup, but they are depicting the same battle. So all the missions but the last one definitely happen as described, and the last mission is likely mutual destruction. The campaigns feature both ship progression (you start off in inferior ships compared to the ones you finish the campaign with) and multiple roles in most missions; typically you'll have some pilots on fighter sweeping duty while others will be managing the capital ships. The missions can be a bit samey, as they tend to have the same progression of "there's some interceptors and some heavy attack craft, you need to balance how you attack them". But there's only so many ways you can spice up space battles, especially when there can be up to eight human players working together, so you can't just have one person be the hero.

Unfortunately, the fact it still is built for multiplayer causes some major rough edges. The first is the dramatic difference in difficulty settings; on medium and above you cannot take out capital ship hardpoints until the shields are down (at which point it is far less necessary). This is an obvious balance mechanism due to how easily a full team of 4-8 humans could pull the teeth out of a capital ship and then just take it out with lasers, but as a result when you're flying alone it makes the ships far more of a pain than in previous games in the series. There's also a handful of missions where the AI being reactive really puts things up to luck. With humans you can pre-place yourselves for an incoming wave, but with the AI they're going to do their thing. And a couple of missions based around inspecting craft are timed, and since the AI doesn't inspect you have to frantically race and hope the AI can keep enemy fighters off you. This leads to a handful of missions being far harder than they should be, including the penultimate missions for each campaign, which are an exercise in how much bullshit you can put up with until you get that one lucky run where things go your way. By comparison the final missions are much more manageable, though the Rebel finale as a bit more luck involved than the Imperial one (which is basically won with overwhelming firepower).

One good thing that can be said is that there is a bit of puzzle solving in figuring out which role you want to take; you can only directly command half the fighters based on which role you pick, so sometimes you might want to take a slower ship to ensure correct target prioritization. Taking out a ship early can stop enemy fighter waves, which can be incredibly important to give you more room to play with when defending a target. And the engine improvements make the game much prettier (though dogfighting is harder due to the hitboxes being tightened up and beam weapons being nerfed for competitive balance).

Frankly, the whole thing is basically skippable if you're not going to do it with friends; the storyline isn't really interesting and there's no particularly clever missions, so it's mostly more dogfighting with the occasional joystick snapping frustration.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2020 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019
* indicates a repeat

1. Invisigun Reloaded (Switch)
2. Human: Fall Flat (Switch)
3. Shantae: The Pirate's Curse (3DS)
4. Darksiders: Warmastered Edition (PC)
5. Splatterhouse (PS3) *
6. 3D Dot Game Heroes (PS3)
7. Tokyo Jungle (PS3)
8. Pictobits (DSiWare)
9. Puzzle Quest: The Legend Reborn (Switch)

10. WarioWare Gold (3DS)

I've always been a big Wario fan, and I'm also quite the WarioWare fan, so this is a game I've had on my radar for a while. But once I saw online that this actually has a ton of Wario VA and little cutscenes in it, I knew I had to pick up the English version (as the Japanese version doesn't have Charles Martinet's Wario in it). It took me 14 hours to finish story mode and clear out the capsule machine (from where you get collectibles). I didn't unlock nearly everything (there are a lot of challenges way too hard for me to try XP), but I certainly got what I wanted out of it, at least for now~

WarioWare Gold IS a new WarioWare game, but it's also largely a compliation of all the previous handheld entries' best games. It's not all the games from the original GBA game, Twisted, and Touched, but it's a LOT of them (over 300, as the back of the box says). There's a story mode with 15 stages, five for each of the three games types (mash (just D-pad and buttons), twist, and touch), and then three final stages that are a mix of the three. These encompass the very silly story of WarioWare Gold.

After his most recent heist of a priceless ancient pot, Wario discovers he's totally tapped out for cash. What's his solution? Hold a giant video game tournament and stream it! And what better way to get games for people to play on it (people being you, the player) than to call up his friends and trick them into making games for free yet again? You need to battle your way through his tournament and win that cash/save the day! There are very silly cutscenes before and after each of the stages that feature Wario as well as his friends (9-Volt, Orbulon, Mona, Kat & Ana, and many more). They're silly and adorable in a way I found endlessly charming. Wario's instructional dialogue for how to play each type of game in particular is what caught my eye online and convinced me to buy the English version of this in the first place X3

Other than the main microgames that make up the meat of the game, there are challenge modes as WarioWare often has. Endless gauntlets of each type of game, a gauntlet with only one life, a gauntlet at the highest speed, even a split-screen mode where you're quickly going between the top and bottom screen to do games as fast as you can! There's also a collection of dedicated minigames you can play for score attacks, and a bunch of other weird and interesting features to unlock by using the coins you earn by playing the game on the little gachapon machine. You can get little trading cards that have details of each character in the game, you can unlock a museum of Nintendo toys and consoles with descriptions and pictures dating from their hanafuda cards all the way to the Switch, you can unlock music tracks of famous songs from WarioWare that even have the lyrics to sing along with (for those that have lyrics), and weirdly enough you can even unlock character-themed alarm clocks. You set the timer on it, leave your 3DS on overnight (presumably), and then it makes a big noise in that character's voice, and it won't STOP making that noise until you get up and WIN three of those character's mini-games!

Verdict: Highly Recommended. I'm not sure when the next new-new WarioWare game will be, but this is a fantastic love letter to the series and to Nintendo's history as a whole. If you like WarioWare, this is about as close to a "definitive" experience for it as you're gonna get. Easily worth the price of admission for any WarioWare fan~

[pook99]

28. Quantum Theory (xbox 360)

This year I have gotten into collecting for gen 7, as a result of that I spent a good deal of time looking at best of/worst of/hidden gems you tube videos for ps3/360/wii. In a top 10 worst xbox games list they talked about a game called Quantum Theory, I never heard of it, but it looked pretty solid, and I couldn't fathom why it was on the list. After a little bit of searching I found a gamestop that was selling a copy for $3 and took it home to play it immediately.

The game throws you right into the action, you are a big burly dude, with armor way too big for your body, that looks like he was ripped straight out of gears of war. Once the gameplay begins the gears of war influences don't end with just the aesthetics, for all intents and purposes this is as gears of war as a game could possibly be. Your character moves just like he does in gears, complete with rodeo run and the ability to duck into cover. Everything about this game just screams gears of war, as it turns out this was made by a japanese developer looking to cash in on the popularity of gears in America.

Does that make it a bad game? No, not at all, if you like gears, you will probably enjoy this game, if you hate gears you will hate this game. It certainly lacks polish and is a bit more ugly than gears, but the basics are there, the shooting is fun, and there are a decent amount of enemies and bosses for you to shoot with a nice variety of guns.

There are a few things that set it apart from its inspiration. First off, for most of the game you are joined by a female companion who runs around shooting and hacking enemies. You can throw her at enemies (think wolverine and colussus fastball special)and she will slice them up, instant killing most enemies and damaging bosses, you can also tag team melee attack enemies, and throw her around to distract enemies from you and while they are focusing on her you can blast them. It is a fun mechanic and I definitely missed her in the sections where she is not with you.

In addition to the team mechanics, much of the cover in this game is destructible, making it hard to hide for too long in some areas and there are some creative sections that involve climbing and riding big worms. There are also far more boss fights in this game than there is in gears and most of the bosses are big and pretty fun to fight.

The story in this game is pretty interesting, like gears it takes place in a world where humanity is ravaged, but instead of aliens destroying earth, there are these man made towers that were created by a scientist and have been corrupted to destroy their surrounding areas and infect the humans in the area. It is a pretty interesting story and I did learning about the world, it does leave a cliffhanger ending that will obviously never get resolved.

Overall, Quantum Theory is a fun game. The fact that I found it on a few worst games EVAR lists just shows that most youtubers just steal ideas from others and don't know what a truly terrible game is. It certainly could make it on a most unoriginal games list, but the fact is if you enjoy gears you will likely enjoy this. The world and environments are interesting and the gunplay is generally fun, it is dirt cheap and if you have played all the other gears game and are in the mood for a competent cover shooter you could do far worse than this game.

[MrPopo]

1. Elite Dangerous - PC
2. Soldier of Fortune - PC
3. Star Wars: TIE Fighter: Defender of the Empire - PC
4. Star Wars: TIE Fighter: Enemies of the Empire - PC
5. Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter: Balance of Power - PC
6. Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance - PC

X-Wing Alliance is the last game in the X-Wing series, taking place between the Battle of Hoth and the Battle of Endor (with the Battle of Endor being the final tour of duty). It brings new stuff to the table and sets out to be a refined version of what came before. Unfortunately, due to some corporate restructuring and the fact that space sims were dying at the time it unfortunately falls just short of being a stand-out title. Another six months of development would have given us a true classic, but as it stands the lows outshine the highs and you're left with a mid tier space game.

XWA is the first game to really focus on your character's personal story; while previous protagonists got canonized with a name you were still just a faceless pilot who did missions. Here you have an in-game canonical name and a family, and the game starts off with you piloting freighters for your family's shipping business. This serves as your tutorial, as well as setting up the personal plotline you will follow in between flying missions for the Rebellion. At the end of this prologue shit goes down, you join the Rebels, and the game proper starts. Throughout the campaign your family will pop back in and have you do a mission to move your personal storyline further. These serve as giving you a bit of a gameplay departure, as you're back to flying freighters instead of the nice fighters of the Rebellion.

The missions are more detailed in this game; you always start off by manually hyperring from your home ship to the combat area, and you might have to do another hyper or two to finish the mission. This is not too dissimilar to the autopilot feature of Wing Commander to move about the playing area, and combined with actually having planets in the skybox leads to all of the combats feeling a bit more real than the more abstract combats of previous games. The mission objectives have good variety to them, and in a nice touch your AI wingmates can inspect stuff, so no asinine "you are the only one who can find the cargo" missions.

One thing you'll notice is that turret AI has been beefed up in this game. So doing bombing runs on capital ships is MUCH harder, as their lasers will target any incoming warheads and destroy them. What hampers them is their refire rate, so the two options you have are to fire as part of a wing so some get through or to get in close and manually fire in between laser salvos (which are aimed at YOU). Thankfully, they walked back the XvT change of not being able to destroy components until the shields are down, so you can take out their weapons or their shield generators earlier. Still, it keeps the capital ships as a pain that are frankly better for you to let your AI compatriots deal with, as they understand how to handle the new ships intuitively.

This friendly turret AI works in your favor, however, in that both you don't have to go nuts when defending friendly capital ships (though you still should focus on bomber craft), and when you fly your freighters. See, they also have turrets, and while you can set them to fire where your cursor is (which isn't bad, since they have infinite energy), but you can also have them just autofire at nearby or selected targets. This turns the freighter missions into an exercise in spinning your ship around to keep your turret's field of fire on them, which is good because your generator is complete ASS. You won't really ever be regenerating shields and barely any laser energy, so abusing the turret is a must.

Unfortunately, this personal story is never finished in-game; it ends on a major cliffhanger and then you switch over to being Lando in the Battle of Endor. It's very clear that they were told they needed to ship, so they couldn't slide in any more missions. And speaking of missions, many of them have some obnoxiously hard parts that require you to have your AI partners be unusually competent and for you to have played them several times over to understand the triggers and how to abuse the spawn system. These are the things that drag the game down, as this goes beyond some of the worst missions of the previous games. Many times it feels like you're punished for doing well, and would be better served by only doing mediocre so that enemy spawns don't retrigger and screw you. And the less said about the run through the Death Star the better.

It's a shame that XWA is such a mixed bag, becomes technology wise it's the best of the series, and had they had more time to polish things we could have had a real classic on our hands.

[Markies]

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2020!
*Denotes Replay For Completion*

1. Pikmin 2 (GCN)
2. Banjo-Tooie (N64)
3. Contra: Hard Corps (GEN)
4. Super Baseball Simulator 1,000 (SNES)



I beat Super Baseball Simulator 1,000 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System this evening!

The original Baseball Simulator 1,000 was one of my childhood games growing up. My brothers and I used to love playing the NES baseball games and I always gravitated towards that one. Obviously, I loved the super powers of the game, but that just added to a fantastic playing baseball game. My major complaint was in the season mode, whenever you would simulate a game between two computer players, it would take forever. It would take over 10 minutes per game and that got really old. Back then, I'd find stuff to do because I still wanted to play the game. I hadn't heard about the SNES version until Drumble mentioned that he had bought it. I then went over to my friend's house to test it out and I was amazed that they had fixed the sim part. It only took about 10 seconds. So, when Drumble put the game up during one of the Backloggery Marathons, I decided to take it as a Prize and see how the game plays for myself.

There is very little difference between the NES and SNES version. Some teams are changed around, but they didn't drastically add new features. The ability to go faster through the season made the purchase worthwhile. Unfortunately, any new additions to the game brought the NES version down a bit. Besides one stadium, they basically all look the same. I loved playing in Space or hitting the ball into the water in Harbor. The hitting is so much harder compared to the NES version. So many pitches would go past me even though I perfectly swung to hit the ball. Also, it is nearly impossible to score runs in the main game. It's either stupid easy or like a squeezing a penny. There is no in between and no rhyme or reason on why it happens. Also, the smushiness of the SNES D-Pad makes it very easy to throw to the wrong base. You have to be extra careful about that, even during tight plays.

Overall, I will always have a fondness for NES Baseball games. The ones that I like, I really like and there are so many that I like. If I had a choice, I'd play the NES version any day of the week. It just feels better. I just wish they would have fixed the sim aspect or made that run a little bit faster. With less features than other games, it makes it hard to go back to for more than a game. It was nice to play an enhanced version of that game, but I think I will always go back to the original.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2020 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019
* indicates a repeat

1. Invisigun Reloaded (Switch)
2. Human: Fall Flat (Switch)
3. Shantae: The Pirate's Curse (3DS)
4. Darksiders: Warmastered Edition (PC)
5. Splatterhouse (PS3) *
6. 3D Dot Game Heroes (PS3)
7. Tokyo Jungle (PS3)
8. Pictobits (DSiWare)
9. Puzzle Quest: The Legend Reborn (Switch)
10. WarioWare Gold (3DS)

11. Disaster: Day of Crisis (Wii)

I played this for the Together Retro theme this month of games that came out in Europe and Japan but not America. I didn't think I had any games that fit that bill, at first, until I remembered that I picked this game up AGES ago (when I first moved into this apartment!). I didn't know a ton about it other than it was a Nintendo thing, and I was kinda surprised to see it was a Monolith Software game as well. AJ first described to me as a mixed bag, and that is a sentiment I agree with, albeit I did not enjoy the contents nearly as much as him XP. It took me around 8 hours (and that's with one level being replayed) to beat the story mode on normal mode while rescuing every person possible.

This game is about the "one heck of a day" of Raymond Bryce (aka Ray), a former rescue team member who quit when his partner died in a mission gone wrong. He's called back into action by the FBI to stop a terrorist organization known as STORM (yes, really) who have taken hostage a famous seismologist as well as Ray's partner's little sister (who blames Ray for killing her brother). Over the next 24 hours, Ray goes through a flame tornado, a 9.0+ earthquake, a mega tsunami, a hurricane, a massive flood, and a supervolcanic eruption in his mission to save the girl and save AMERICA.

It's a super cheesy homage to old disaster and action movies, and the VA isn't half bad (it's exactly good enough to fit the tone of what they're doing). Despite this being the Japanese version of the game, there is only an English dub available, which leads me to believe no Japanese dub exists (it's just Japanese subtitles), so even though you couldn't read the instructions on how to do anything, it's somewhat import-friendly in that way. The narrative is definitely the strongest point in the game and ties the rest of the action together, even if some cutscenes can go on for what feels like ages (in a very Monolith Software way). What IS the rest of the action? Well, that's where the mixed bag's uglier bits start to come full center.

Disaster came out in 2008, and as with a lot of early Nintendo-published Wii games, its mechanics are pretty focused around showing off as many Wii gimmicks as possible. As a result, there are four main modes of gameplay: Adventure, Driving, Light Gun, and what I'll just call "Rescue" events. They each deserve their own specific elaborations, so I'll try and give each its dues.

- Adventure: This is composed of running around as Ray with no real action happening. It's largely an activity that fills up the spaces in between the other activities and cutscenes. You can run around and look for people to save and boxes to crush for goodies, and you only need to worry about the occasional quicktime event/next activity starting. Occasionally there will be some active danger you need to get through, like getting through fire that'll burn you, or smoke that'll suffocate you, or getting through an area before a timer runs out, but those are all pretty well done. The camera even has an auto mode in addition to re-positioning it behind you, which is a nice feature. The only seriously clunky parts of this are the platforming. Ray can jump, but he's no Super Mario. The jumping and even the running are stiff and do not feel good, although actual platforming sections are mercifully few and far between, not to mention the hardest ones are always optional. The very first level has a fair bit of platforming in it, which gave me a bit of a worry that the whole game would be like that, but it's luckily fairly unrepresentative of the full product.

- Driving: Driving is (usually) first-person driving sections where you hold the Wiimote like a steering wheel (because of course you do). The controls are acceptable, and the addition of using A as a handbreak to drift is neat, but that's more or less where the positives end. The driving sections are easily the worst parts of the game, as they don't control as well as they need to, visibility is usually either poor or even non-existent (I'm looking at you tsunami level!!!), and they can be (or at least feel) pretty frustratingly long. These sections are utterly dreadful, and it really sucks that you can't skip them at all. The requirement to have to push through the driving sections is easily the #1 thing that would keep me from recommending this game to someone.

- Light Gun: This is one of the game's stronger action elements for sure. Ray very routinely needs to fight STORM soldiers in guided light gun shooting gallery segments done by pointing the Wiimote at the screen. You shoot with B, hide behind cover by holding Z, shake the nunchuk to reload, and even zoom in for better aim and damage by holding C. You can even earn points for doing well at them, and then use those to purchase new guns and upgrade the ones you have. You can even find a special NPC around some maps who will give you tickets to the shooting range that you have access to between levels, and clearing those gives you access to special super weapons! I personally mostly just used the pistols, since they have great range, infinite ammo, and perfectly fine damage if you're doing headshots. That said, I'm sure the other guns are much more useful on hard mode. Some of the boss encounters can drag on a bit and have irksome difficulty spikes (glares at two-jeep battle), but I had a fair bit of fun with this mode even if it can get a bit repetitive after a while.

- Rescue Activities: These are activities you do to save people in peril throughout the game, and they can range from ALL sorts of stuff that you'll do with the Wiimote. Pointing it at areas on their bodies to bandage them if they're hurt, pumping it in time with a rhythm to do CPR to them, waving it out at just the right moment to catch their hand to save them from a fall. They're fun diversions, and some of the better quicktime events.

Speaking of quicktime events, the game does have a LOT that pop up during Adventure points, but they're alright and work well for the most part. Some seemed very unreasonably temperamental with how I needed to waggle the Wiimote. Gestures that had been totally fine an hour ago were suddenly giving me failed results, and that can get really irritating in things like in the last level, where one of the last sections is a long series of quicktime events you can only miss one or two of before you need to restart the section. The game is thankfully very merciful with checkpoints, but there are still times I wish it were even a little more merciful with them. Had this been a Nintendo game that came out these days (well, for one, they probably wouldn't say "shit" in it), the game would probably have the option to just auto-complete an action segment you failed enough, and it'd be much easier to recommend. But this is a game from 2008, and it doesn't have that, and the experience suffers for it.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. The campy presentation is fun and silly, but the game's runtime kinda outstays its welcome. The story is also so silly and fluffy that it makes it kinda difficult to get really invested in, and being invested in seeing the narrative to its conclusion is pretty important if you're gonna stick through the worst of the action sequences. This game is just as entertaining as it is frustrating, and it's something I'd only recommend to people who really like the Wii (i.e. motion controls) and have plenty of patience. Add on top of that that most people who read this would have to import the game to play it, and it's really difficult to justify recommending such a mixed experience with such a potentially high barrier to entry.

[pook99]

Partridge: I literally just saw a youtube video about that game today, it looks interesting, but your critique of the driving segments is definitely offputting for me, I tend to hate driving games/segments in general so that may be a deal breaker for me.

Do you need to mod your wii to play import games?

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge: I literally just saw a youtube video about that game today, it looks interesting, but your critique of the driving segments is definitely offputting for me, I tend to hate driving games/segments in general so that may be a deal breaker for me.

Do you need to mod your wii to play import games?

If you can find the game for cheap (like less than $10) and can mod your Wii easily enough to play the PAL version, I'd say it's worth a go. It's a game that people tend to either love or quite dislike (I'm on the latter part of that spectrum, AJ and Elkin are on the former), and if you can find it for as cheap as I did, then I'd say that's a risk worth taking for how short it is. The bad may very well be worth pushing through for the good for you.

I'm afraid I don't actually know anything about Wii modding though. I just own a Japanese Wii, so that's what I played it on.

[Note]

Markies, it's great to see someone else talk about Super Baseball Simulator for the SNES. This was one of my favorite games growing up. I never played the NES version, and only heard of it after the fact, so my nostalgia is for the SNES version.

It's a game I picked up off a friend back when I was a kid, and still have that cart. When I was in college in the early 2000's, a roommate of mine had a SNES in the dorms, and I brought this game up. My roommates ended up really enjoying it too, including some that usually aren't into video games much.

I played it a bit last night, but your post makes me want to try to play through a season. How many games did you choose for season mode?

Also, I gotta check to make sure the battery on my cartridge is still good.

[Markies]

I only did a 5 Game Season.

That is one of the draw backs. You only have a 6 team league. So, you can do a 5, 10, 20 or 165 game season. If you playing against 5 teams in 165 game season, you are playing the same team over 30 times. But, the game keeps track of all the season stats, so it would be cool to see those increase throughout the year.

Also, one of the drawbacks from playing a long season on the NES version was if you ever had a 5 or 10 game lead, all of your pitchers instantly got tired. That is the game's rubber band effect. I don't know if that is in the SNES version as I never played that many.

But, I would say, give the NES version a shot. It's only like $5 - $10, much like the SNES version. It's fun and different enough to warrant a purchase.