Games Not Beaten 2023

[Raging Justice]

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

My first Shantae game and I'd say it's all style, no substance

The game looks great. The art style is gorgeous and there's plenty of fanservice (every single female character has big boobs and shows off some skin),The gameplay though is very meh.

The enemy combat isn't particularly interesting. You're just whipping people with your hair all day like Kabuki: Quantum Fighter. I got a gun as a secondary weapon, but it's weak as hell. The combat is kind of cheap at times, like those obnoxious jumping frogs early in the game that randomly jump around the environment and can shoot projectiles at you from off screen just as you're in the middle of a jump. Or enemies just randomly materializing above you in some places (stupid bat creatures and snakes). Then there's the annoying rooms where you're locked in and have to fight two powerful enemies at once. None of this matters though, since the game hands you so many damn health items that you can't actually die. The sole exception to this is certain areas that inexplicably become one hit kill zones where Shantae dies with the exploding Mega Man animation for some strange reason. Oh wait, that's right...it's a reference. You know how pandering game studios love to shove pointless references into their games

The writing is clever and funny at times, but just stupid at other times.

The boss fights are pretty good, but it's not enough to make me want to keep playing.

[Raging Justice]

Chained Echoes

Fuck the overdrive bar, it's cheap bullshit that frequently gives the enemy damage bonuses against your party. Whatever boost in strength or defense that it gives you when you're in the green part of the bar is barely noticeable, but once the enemy keeps getting you stuck in the red part of the bar your party starts taking increased damage from powerful enemies that were ALREADY doing lots of damage to your party.

In addition, your ability to get out of the red zone is randomly determined by the game. If you don't have any ability that the game randomly decided lowers the bar, you're stuck with zero ways to reduce it. Switching party members or blocking reduces it, but only by a miniscule amount that gets negated every time the enemy gets a turn and increases it again. Plus, being forced to do nothing but switch party members or block effectively makes your party flaccid and unable to do anything USEFUL while the enemy just keeps pounding away on you and it's not like those blocks are really doing anything to keep you alive against a strong enemy, especially when every time the enemy gets turns it's just bouncing your party back into the increased damage, red zone of the overdrive bar.

Fuck this stupid mechanic, all it does is punish players for no fucking reason. It's just an arbitrary thing that makes your party take increased damage after a certain number of turns. Why? You think the game's story explains why this stupid thing exists? Nope.

What is wrong with fucking stupid indie developers coming up with stupid, retarded new mechanics that add nothing of value to a game. All the overdrive meter does is take options away from the player, especially when you have to use certain abilities just to reduce the stupid thing instead of actually helping you defeat the enemy. Oh, I could unleash a powerful attack right now, but next turn I will be stuck in the red zone of the overdrive meter, so let me instead use this randomly determined ability that will lower my meter. Oh hurray! The game has determined that using steal lowers the meter! So let me go and use steal on the powerful enemy that I have already stolen an item from. Hurray for some stupid meter that makes me waste turns! What a brilliant fucking concept!

[Raging Justice]

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Okay, I'm not playing this anymore. I have been thoroughly turned off by the shitty design of some levels in this game, like Bulrush Express as well as those stupid music levels and the absolutely fucking stupid KO arenas.

[Markies]

I removed Fallout 3: Game Of The Year Edition for the Sony Playstation 3 this evening!

Most of the time, when I remove a game, it is because the game is bad in my opinion or I become too frustrated in a game. Every now and then, you get the rare instances where you play a game and you don't like anything about it because it is not for you. Fallout and to another extent, The Elder Scrolls games, seem to fall in that category. I have tried them both and they are just not for me. I did not like the setting or the story at all in Fallout 3, so that already was an uphill battle. I then got into town and I got to experience that like dead-eye Betheseda stare with all of these people talking and all of these dialogue options and I just become overwhelmed. It was too much for me. After exploring a bit and dying several times, I realized that this is not a game nor a world that I wanted to be a part of.

I know what games I will like and what ones I will not after playing it for a bit. Fallout 3 just was not for me.

[Markies]

I removed Doom 64 on the Nintendo 64 this afternoon.

I was hoping to make a post in another thread, but here I am. And apparently, I am not having any luck with First Person Shooters at the moment.

I played through all of the levels last year in Doom I & II, so I was excited to play more in Doom 64. At the very start, the game ramps up rather quickly. It very much feels like a harder version of the original games. You run into difficult monsters rather quickly as you are extremely over matched. All of the maps are these giant mazes that takes upwards of an hour to complete, which means you get to do them all over if you die. And the mazes aren't that intuitive anyway as buttons are obscured and hard to find and they will open doors on the other side of the map. I had problems with the first two Doom games and they are only exacerbated here. If you like the first two Doom games, then you will love this one. For me, not so much.

[ElkinFencer10]

I didn't drop a whole lot of games this year, and there's a couple I started in 2023 and haven't finished yet but don't plan to drop. I did, however, drop Amnesia: The Bunker. It just...wasn't fun. The atmosphere was great. Puzzles were okay. But they made the game start to revolve around having very scarce bullets in your revolver to protect yourself from the monster instead of "Don't ever let it touch you because you'll die," and for some reason, that became more frustrating than fun for me. Go figure.

[SyedDanishAnwar]

Here are the other games I started in 2023 that are in progress. Due to my busy schedule, I can play 6 hours a week.

PS3
Spec Ops: The Line - In Progress

PC
Skyrim - In Progress (Level 30+)
Wo Long Dynasty - In Progress
Elden Ring - In Progress
Half Life Episodes x2 - In Progress
Batman Arkham City - In Progress
Batman Arkham Asylum - In Progress
Batman Origins - In Progress

PC Emulators
Mario Sunshine - In Progress
Mario Wonder - In Progress
Mario Galaxy - In Progress
Mario Kart Double Dash - In Progress
Mario Kart 8 - In Progress
Sonic Frontiers - In Progress
Star Fox Zero - In Progress
Star Fox Assault - In Progress
Batman Origins Blackgate - In Progress
Prince of Persia 1,2,3 | Gamecube rom - In Progress

PS5
Batman Arkane Knight - In Progress
Resident Evil Origins Collection - In Progress
Resident Evil 2 Remake - In Progress
Resident Evil 3 Remake - In Progress
Resident Evil 4 Remake - In Progress
Street Fighter 6 - In Progress
Tekken 8 - In progress.


At the rate I play games, I hope to complete the above before turning 60. Being a married gamer is tough, indeed. I just buy games to get a taste of them instead of finishing them.

Of the games in progress, I especially like REIV Remake bought last year.

RE4 Remake is a great game that deserved a GOTY, in my opinion. But remakes rarely get awards. Lastly, Tekken 8 and SF 6 provides hours of entertainment whenever I get the time to play it. I like Tekken 8 better due to more realistic visuals.

[Ack]

If you're concerned about having limited time, I can tell you that the Half-Life 2 episodes aren't that long. You could probably knock them out in a few weeks at 6 hours of weekly play time.

It may take a while, but persevere! You got this!

[SyedDanishAnwar]

If you're concerned about having limited time, I can tell you that the Half-Life 2 episodes aren't that long. You could probably knock them out in a few weeks at 6 hours of weekly play time.

It may take a while, but persevere! You got this!

Thanks for the info. I loved Half Life 1 and 2 that I played during my teens about two decades ago. But I didn't got the chance to complete the episodes. I will play them once I complete Crisis Core on my PC, which is nearly complete.

I removed Grand Theft Auto IV for the Sony Playstation 3 this evening!

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is one of my Top 10 Favorite Games of All Time. And GTAIII is probably Top 20. I loved the series on the PS2 and I was very excited to play a new entry for the first time in over a decade. I know they changed a ton, but I did not realize it would be that much of a radical shift. Almost everything changed in the game and I kind of felt like it was all for the worse. First of all, almost all of the music is terrible which was my favorite aspect in Vice City. Almost all of the missions are these cover based shooting missions, so they drag on and on especially if you have to do them multiple times. They changed the control scheme, but they included the original controls to help out. That helps, but I never felt like I had a good grasp on the controls, especially during the gun fights. Your character has a cell phone and it never stops ringing or sending text messages. The driving felt different. Also, the story was fairly terrible. It lost all the fun of the previous games as each person is just a terrible human being.

Overall, the game is not fun to play and I began to wonder why I was playing the game in the first place. For me, personally, I will leave and remember GTA as a PS2 only series.

I have the exact personal opinion about the GTA series. I had played GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas about two decades ago on my PS2, and loved them. The stories and the gameplays were highly engaging.
But the last 2 games didn't impressed me to keep on playing them. I didn't find the same fun element similar to Vice City and San Andreas to complete these games.

GTAV may be the most popular in the series. However, the game didn't cut it for me. I was particularly grossed out with the scene where Trevor beat the heck out of a character with pieces of brain stuck on his boots. That was when I deleted the game from my PS3. My heart just can't take it when there is too much violence in games such as GTAV and MK games.