Games Beaten 2020

[Flake]

So that SNK Pro Stick is actually like a plug & play with built-in games? Interesting -- I never would have guessed. Better than the Neo Geo X?

Yep! It can be run as an arcade stick, as a plug and play console, or as a console with the Neo Geo reproduction controllers or even the Neo Geo Mini as the controllers. It's really wacky but it works.

I cannot speak to the emulation being better or worse than the Neo Geo X but I like it a lot. I've played these games on numerous platforms and systems and these feel fast and responsive.

[Note]

1. Streets of Rage 2 (Sega Genesis Mini)
2. The Ninja Warriors (Super Nintendo) [3x]
3. TMNT IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)
4. Golden Axe (Sega Genesis Mini) [2x]
5. Beyond Oasis (Sega Genesis Mini)
6. Super Double Dragon (Super Nintendo)
7. Shenmue II (Sega Dreamcast)
8. Shining Force 2 (Sega Genesis)


9. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (Super Nintendo)

I originally received Yoshi's Island as a Christmas present shortly after it's release in 1995, and played through the game at that time but had not picked it up since. After playing a lot of beat 'em ups and a few RPGs earlier in the year, I wanted to switch it up and play a few platformers, and figured I'd revisit something I had not played in a long time. When I was younger, this was not one of my preferred games on the system, but it's grown on me over the years. One of my main issues was that crying sound from Baby Mario, I couldn't stand it. Lol.

Other than that sound effect, I can't complain about much else in this game. The graphics aged really well, and I'm glad that even though this was released after Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo didn't try to make this title with pre-rendered graphics too. The cartoony art style they went with for this game looks great and set it apart from other titles in this genre. The look of the bosses are fun too, with all the bosses being large characters that take up a big chunk of the screen. The aiming mechanics for throwing eggs takes a bit of time to get used to, but it's implemented well, and the flutter jump is also a useful ability to have on-hand, and will be necessary to get down in the later stages. There is a lot of variety in the gameplay, with the chance for Yoshi to morph into a helicopter, car, drill, and submarine, and the inclusion of mini-games for bonus items and bonus challenges. Also, I really enjoy the music, especially in the later levels and the final boss battle.

Difficulty wise, I found this game to be fairly challenging. The first few worlds are on the easier side, but once you get to World 4, the difficulty starts to ramp up and certain levels will take multiple tries to understand the patterns, timing of certain actions, and which pathway to take through the stage. Yoshi's Island is especially challenging if you want to try to score a perfect 100 on each level by collecting all the stars, red coins, and flowers in each stage. If you're able to achieve this, you can unlock the bonus levels, which I was not able to do during my play through, but I did enjoy exploring all the stages in an attempt to find the various collectables. This gives the game good replay value, as you can go back and try to perfect the scores for the levels in which collectables were missed.

Overall, this game is a lot of fun and is a really unique platformer. This is definitely recommended, and worth your time for anyone who has not played through it yet!

[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
7. Phoenix Point - PC
8. Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter - PC
9. Descent II - PC
10. Inbento - Switch

Inbento is a cute little puzzle game that was apparently originally on mobile and recently got a Switch port. I saw it in a "recent releases" roundup and the fact it was $5 and starred cats was all I needed to give it a try. And while it was relatively short it was a lot of fun.

The basic premise is that you need to fill bento boxes for lunches with the appropriate items in the appropriate layout. The catch is you only have a limited number of specific pieces to play, and usually in shapes that require you to overwrite whatever's there. Initially you just have various blocks of food, but then the game introduces swapping, shoving, picking up (to place somewhere else), copying, and finally filling (the block and all touching blocks of the same time become the type of the fill block, or if there is empty space it fills the empty space). Each chapter will either introduce a new element or combine elements that had previously been separated, so you always have something new to wrap your head around.

The puzzles themselves are an exercise in challenge in simplicity. You'll have around 4-5 moves to do per puzzle, so you don't have brain overload, but you still need to be thinking of the board state several moves ahead to get the order right. The UI works perfectly for what this game needs, and unlike some puzzle games if you do a move wrong you don't need to restart from the beginning; you can rewind every move instantly one step at a time.

The framing story is of a momma cat raising her kitten, who grows, up, graduates, gets a job, and has a kid his own. It's told through a series of still pictures in between each chapter, and there isn't any actual depth, it's just something to make you smile and reward you in between batches of puzzles. Plus, cats.

There are certainly worse ways to spend $5 if you're a fan of puzzle games.

[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)
12. Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition (Xbone)
13. Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point (Xbone)
14. Sleeping Dogs: Year of the Snake (Xbone)
15. Dynamite Headdy (Genesis) *
16. Shovel Knight: King of Cards (3DS)
17. Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope (3DS) *
18. Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows (Switch) *
19. Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment (Switch) *
20. Shovel Knight: Showdown (Switch)

21. Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PS4)

I absolutely adored the first Dragon Quest Builders when I played it a couple years ago, and was really stoked to hear a sequel was coming out. It came out in Japan a long time before it came out in English, and I was tempted to buy it but put off buying it for long enough for it to come out in English. I really like how the DQ games are localized, so I opted for an English copy (also because the English version of this game is already pretty darn cheap for a game that isn't that old). DQB was a game that I loved, and DQB2 enhances it to the point that it's sorta mind blowing just how much of an improvement it is while still feeling so familiar. I did almost all of the tablet challenges and got every achievement for the game over the course of a week. The game doesn't keep track of play time, but I'd hazard I played it at least 45 hours if not more.

Like DQB1 was based on Dragon Quest 1, DQB2 is based on the story of the original Dragon Quest 2. Hargon and Malroth have been defeated by the Scions of Erdrick, and his followers are in full retreat across the land. You play a builder who was unlucky enough to be caught in a slave raid by some of these retreating followers, but in the process of the ship's captain asking you to do odd jobs around the ship, you begin to develop a kinship with the monsters who've captured you. That is until you get caught in a horrible storm and the ship sinks. You wake up on a mysterious beach next to another unfamiliar person who wasn't on the ship. He's lost all his memory, but knows his name is Malroth. The Builder and Malroth embark on an adventure to figure out the mysteries of this strange world as well as build their Isle of Awakening into the best kingdom it can be.

I really enjoyed the story and the writing for this game. It has a lot of silly puns (especially the monsters) and quirky characters but put together with a story that still has something to say in the end. It almost feels like an animated kids movie in that regard. It has some tone problems at points, where narratively some pretty serious things are happening, but the dialogue, art style, music, etc, don't really mesh well with the gravity of the situation the characters find themselves in. Despite that, it's a really sweet story about how coexistence between presumed opposites is possible, and the duality of destruction and creation. It's hardly gonna win any awards, but it was far more than I was expecting from the game, and is a really neat reimagining of the DQ2 universe (and remarkably, in a very different fashion to how DQB1 reimagines the universe of DQ1).

The gameplay will be very familiar to anyone who played the first DQB, but it also has many meaningful changes that really shift how you play the game. The first DQB is very much an action/adventure game with Dragon Quest aesthetics & setting all around the mechanics of a Minecraft clone. Most significantly is how a multiplayer mode is not some sectioned off piece of content from the main game. In the first DQB, the main game was a series of stages totally separate from each other, with nothing carrying over to the next island you went to, and the multiplayer mode was a cooperative building mode that used recipies from the single player mode but was otherwise an entirely separate entity. DQB2 changes this entirely with the Isle of Awakening where you start the narrative proper. You go to a series of islands, but under the conceit of collecting new inhabitants and materials to create your kingdom on this personal island, and activities both on and off this main island make up the bulk of the game's narrative. You can invite other players over to your island to cooperatively build your island together, and you can even go off to procedurally generated extra "explorer's shores" islands to collect new materials (and if you explore those extra islands well enough, you can unlock infinite supplies of certain common crafting materials so grinding for materials like wood or string is just never a thing). I don't have PSN online, so I never tried this, but it's a fantastic reworking of how you can enjoy building with other people.

Beyond that, there are a lot of other mechanical shifts as well. No longer do weapons break. Tools are a thing you always have, can be shifted between with the X button (which also sometimes means you're talking to people/activating things instead of it, but it's fine most of the time) and activated with R2. This includes a hammer to break stuff, but also a trowel to swap out blocks or put them down a bunch at a time, a bottomless jug to actually manipulate liquids (a feature totally absent in the last game), as well as other tools you'll unlock as you complete challenges on the Isle of Awakening (which themselves are all about building and crafting). Even your weapons don't break, although combat itself is largely the same from the first game. This is all on top of other things like being able to recruit and utilize monsters (for everything as a mount to a terraformer), build buildings in a way to have your villagers automate things like food production, and customize how you physically look irrespective of what weapons and armor you're technically using. The last cherry on top being that the mission design has also been refined a fair bit. It's a fantastic mechanical overhaul that I never realized the series needed until I played this, and now I can't imagine not having them (despite how much I wanna go back and replay the first game X3).

The presentation is fairly similar to the first game in many ways. There's a lot of new furniture (with most all of the unused old stuff being unlockable eventually in the post-game) and block types, but also not THAT much that the game looks totally different. The aesthetic and presentation is still very much that Dragon Quest Builders-style of chibi Toriyama designs, Dragon Quest music, and blocky landscapes, and if you didn't like that in the first game you won't like them here either. I liked them, though, even if the music does get a bit old after a while (especially while story things aren't happening).

Negatives are mostly little quality of life things. The fact that your inventory has been MASSIVELY expanded so you basically never need chests (you can hold hundreds of items at once) is nice, but finding things in it can be very irritating without a search feature. The same goes for finding a recipe you need in the ever-growing crafting list. The same thing being bound to the same button is also kind of a pain, particularly with how R1 is run but also "climb onto monster", which not infrequently led to me getting clobbered in the face when I was trying to flee but instead climbed onto my Sabercat's back. The game is also really weird with how it doles out certain aspects and mechanics of building on the Isle of Awakening, locking them fairly arbitrarily behind completing certain building challenges on the island. It tells you about the challenges, but not about what rewards they might actually hold. It's nothing ever super duper significant, but knowing beforehand that those were there would've been nice, and there's nothing ultimately deal-breaking about any of the game's shortcomings.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you liked Dragon Quest Builders 1, this is an absolute must-play. It is everything a sequel should strive to be and more with how well it refines the first game's building mechanics, multiplayer mode, and quality of life features. Even if you aren't a huge fan of the building aspects (I'm not reallllly a big fan of them, but I liked putting new rooms together), it's still an excellent action/adventure game with some Minecraft-esque trappings. I would never expect Omega Force to produce a game like this, but I'll be damned if they didn't absolutely outdo themselves with this one, and I really hope they keep going with this series.

[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
7. Phoenix Point - PC
8. Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter - PC
9. Descent II - PC
10. Inbento - Switch
11. Ori and the Will of the Wisps - XB1

Will of the Wisps is the sequel to Ori and the Blind Forest and continues to be a very good metroidvania. Interestingly enough, though, the game actually makes several changes that seem to be inspired by Hollow Knight. I think it ends up being for the better; they've toned down the challenge platformer parts in favor of NPC dialog and combat, and it mostly works (though the combat isn't as good as Hollow Knight's).

The premise is that Ori has been raising the chick of Kuro, the final boss of the first game, and eventually she is able to fly. Ori tags along, but then a storm strikes and they are separated in a new forest. And it turns out this new forest also has problems that need solving. What's a forest spirit to do but collect things and beat bosses?

The game will be familiar to players of the first. The key movement abilities have all returned, though you have to unlock most of them again. What's new is they swapped out the skill tree for a badge system. You have to collect badges to gain boosts to your core abilities, and some of them can be leveled up for great effects using a currency that enemies drop (or is found in various secret areas). This currency also allows you to unlock additional combat moves (as well as upgrade them). See, what they did was give Ori a melee attack as his primary combat skill now, and you equip active skills to X, Y, and B. You're free to change them up whenever you wish, so you might start off with basic melee, purchase the heavy melee, and put heal on the third button. But maybe later you swap things for various additional traversal abilities, or want to go with ranged magic instead. For the most part it feels pretty good, but the combat never quite gels; you're a bit too floaty and the hitboxes are a bit too wide, so you'll frequently run into something trying to hit them (usually in the air or against a boss) and mess up your cadence.

The traversal is toned down compared to the original game, though the end game and certain secrets still demand you to be good at the game's systems. But until the very end of the game there aren't really any sequences where you need to do six perfectly timed jumps between grapple points through a spike maze to progress. And the game still has an incredibly well done checkpoint system that keeps it from being too frustrating. Indeed, the only part that did suck was the final chase sequence of the game; that one is just a little too long and the most unforgiving timing parts are at the end.

The game also has a bunch of NPCs you can help out by doing side quests, which mostly just give you currency, but sometimes unlock routes to pickups. Two of them give you damage boosts, but you can nab both of those midway through the game; I was surprised there wasn't a couple more as you neared the end of the game. In fact, the fact that I felt obligated to have several of my badges be dedicated to damage boosts was the biggest flaw in the game's balance; enemies just have too much health for the way combat flows, so every damage boost you can get is important to keep things moving.

If you liked the first you'll definitely like the second. If you stopped playing the first because you got brickwalled by some of the platforming then consider giving the second a try; like I said, they toned down the bullshit.

[REPO Man]

Streets of Red: Devil's Dare Deluxe for PS4, on Casual. It's a really challenging throwback beat-em-up with permadeath.

I also beat ChromaGun, another great first-person puzzle game, though a couple of trophies refused to trigger. The one for beating the game and the one for trying to jump over a Deadly Electrified Maintenance Tile both refused to trigger. I've also been having an issue with trophies syncing.

[Juan Aguacate]

Streets of Red: Devil's Dare Deluxe for PS4, on Casual. It's a really challenging throwback beat-em-up with permadeath.

Challenging? Really? I thought it was a pretty easy game, lots of fun to play though! It reminds me in some ways of Turtles in Time on the SNES and has about the same level of difficulty (easy)

Speaking of beat 'em ups (and keeping in line with the point of this thread), I finished River City Tokyo Rumble on the 3ds. That includes completing all of the extra stuff in new game plus mode, I basically did a completionist playthrough. It's an excellent game, and makes similar games like Scott Pilgrim and River City Girls look like the work of amateurs. Those games suck, Tokyo Rumble rocks. I spoke a bit more about it in the What are you playing thread. My one minor complaint is that you can't max HP in this game like you can the other stats, as HP is randomly determined when you level up. So every player will have different numbers for HP when they hit level 99. Every other stat has a set max that is set in stone, 30 for agility, 255 for the other stats. Irks the perfectionist and control freak in me that you have no control over your HP stat. I hate when rpgs randomize stats

[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)
12. Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition (Xbone)
13. Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point (Xbone)
14. Sleeping Dogs: Year of the Snake (Xbone)
15. Dynamite Headdy (Genesis) *
16. Shovel Knight: King of Cards (3DS)
17. Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope (3DS) *
18. Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows (Switch) *
19. Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment (Switch) *
20. Shovel Knight: Showdown (Switch)
21. Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PS4)

22. ActRaiser (SNES)

This is a game I bought a veeeery long time ago on my Wii Virtual Console, and haven't played in over a decade. I got stuck on the final boss rush and gave up way back when, but Note was talking about it in the Slack chat and it inspired me to give it another try. It wasn't nearly as hard as I remember it, so I'm glad to see that I've in fact gotten a bit better at action platformers in the past ten years XD. I played it on my Wii Virtual Console with my Classic Controller Pro (which I'm loving more and more every time I use it), and it took me about four hours to finish with an ending population of 4620.

You play as the god of a world, awakened by a little angel follower of yours to save the world from the Tanzra, an evil demon lord who defeated you long ago. You go through six worlds saving the people of that world from the monsters that are terrorizing that area.

ActRaiser is a balancing act of two main game modes: the action mode and the sim mode. Each of the six worlds has an introductory action platforming section to save that land from monsters on the surface, and then there is a second action platforming stage to finally rid that world of the monsters lurking beneath. There's also a final boss rush composed of the six bosses in the second action stages from each world followed by Tanzra himself. The American version's action segments were apparently made easier from the Japanese version's, and I appreciate it. For a very early SNES game, it's got a really pleasant sweet spot of difficulty where it isn't too hard but isn't too easy either (despite the controls being a little stiff).

In between the two action segments in each world are a sim section where you play as the little angel follower as you shoot arrows at monsters who spawn around the map. You guide the villagers who live there to start building out their settlements from their starting temple, guiding them to each monster lair to seal it shut. Once all the monster lairs are shut, then you get the opportunity to fight the second action segment in that world. But all is not quite that simple. Each world is plagued with the monsters you must fight, but also physical hindrances you'll need to use your god powers to get rid of. Eliminating trees with lightning, drying up marshes with the sun, fertilizing deserts with rain, and even connecting islands via an earthquake. The citizens themselves also have conflicts between each other that you'll need to solve, and it often involves taking their offerings and bringing them to other settlements to solve problems like needing wool to keep warm, or needing wheat to feed themselves better than existing crops.

Helping out the citizens in these extra ways is usually optional, but it's very important because of how the action and sim segments compliments each other mechanically. The more points you earn in the action segments, the higher your maximum population in that area can be. Your player level is determined by how much total population the world has, and the higher your level, the higher your maximum HP. In addition, your followers can find MP scrolls, magic spells, and even extra lives to help you get through the action segments.

It may be an early SNES game, but the presentation and mechanics hold up really well. There aren't a ton of musical tracks, but what is there is really nice. While there may not be many animations, the player and enemy models are big and detailed. A really impressive bit of design for developers more or less pioneering on what then was such new hardware.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Both types of gameplay are quite simple, but that works really well for the pacing of the game. If either were more complicated, it would bog down the pacing and harm the overall experience. Both aspects may be too simple to be their own game in a satisfactory manner, but paired together like this they make for an all around very complimentary experience. It may be short, but it's well worth trying out if you like action platformers and simple strategy games ^w^

[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)
12. Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition (Xbone)
13. Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point (Xbone)
14. Sleeping Dogs: Year of the Snake (Xbone)
15. Dynamite Headdy (Genesis) *
16. Shovel Knight: King of Cards (3DS)
17. Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope (3DS) *
18. Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows (Switch) *
19. Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment (Switch) *
20. Shovel Knight: Showdown (Switch)
21. Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PS4)
22. ActRaiser (SNES)

23. Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth (WiiWare)

While I have the Wii U (and therefore the contents of my old Wii that was transferred into it) hooked up, I figured I would play through some of the other games I've had sitting on there for ages that I'd never gotten to playing through before. First up on the list was the Castlevania entry in Konami's ReBirth series they did for WiiWare. I picked it up back before the Wii store shut down, but I never got around to playing it until now. It took me around two hours to play through the whole thing.

I haven't played Gradius: ReBirth, but I have played Contra: ReBirth, and unlike that game, Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth is a remake of an old game rather than an entirely new one. That said, only in the scantest sense is this actually the old GameBoy game Castlevania: The Adventure. Other than some recurring enemies (like the big rolling eyeballs), your whip shooting a fireball at max power, and the protagonist still being Christopher Belmont, this is an entirely separate game (and thank goodness). There are 6 stages instead of only 4 (granted stage 6 is just Dracula, really), all of the stages have been completely reworked, and THANK GOODNESS your whip doesn't power down when you get hit.

While I haven't played every one of the non-Metroid-y Castlevania games, I've played enough of them to say pretty confidently that this is both a faithful entry to those games as well as the easiest of those games by a significant margin. Part of this is due to how the game plays. You can unlock a "classic" playstyle by starting the game once (you can immediately quit and you've unlocked it) where your controls are like the NES games (namely your fixed jump), but the standard play mode is with far more play control. You can still only whip left and right, but being able to modify your jump midair, even a little,
makes it SO much easier to get through. This on top of being able to choose your starting number of lives (1-9) and difficulty mode make this game a far more easily completed beast than its ancestors.

It's got great music with some great remixes of old tracks, and a really pretty art style that's far more fluid and HD than the DS games of the time. It has some great new bosses, and a really excellent final Dracula fight as well. Plenty of checkpoints and a good difficulty curve to boot make this a great entry to this style of Castlevania game.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Igarashi shows he can not only do Metroid-y Casltevanias but classic-syle ones as well. This is a fantastic entry into the action/platformer lineage of Castlevania, and it's well worth checking out if you're itching for that kind of action but don't want something quite as unforgiving as the older games.

[elricorico]

1. NBA Jam (GEN)
2. Astro Bot Rescue Mission (PSVR)

3. Bastion (PS4)

This game has been on my playstation account for quite a while now, but I never actually loaded it up until recently. I played a few levels to try it out as a distraction from other games I was playing and it kept me coming back fairly regularly.

This is an isometric action game with some light RPG elements and a couple of style choices that makes it stand out from the crowd. The music, narration and world building make it unique and memorable.

The music, while sparse, sets a Western tone that is supported strongly by the narrators drawl. The story of the world is interesting, even though it is served up in tiny bits and much is left to the imagination.

It is a relatively forgiving game, aside from a couple of the challenges, and has a built in reason for replaying a New Game+, since there seems to be at least one alternate ending. It is short, and the levels are quick, making this a good game to progress on even of you only have a short gaming time in your day.

If you are like me and sat on this game for a while then I'd suggest jumping in soon, I doubt you'll be disappointed.