Original Post




Game 1: L.A. Noire - 25 hours [Finished February 9] [PS3]

Rating: 8.5

When I started playing this I would have never expected to be finishing it any time soon. I was fully engrossed by this. The game is obviously flawed, the graphics are dated, I didn't even care for the design of L.A., and I don't know if I'd play it again, but I loved the conversation and interrogation system. The story kept me interested, ending on a dark but perfect note for noir. The cases kept me hooked enough that I only played this game, for a few hours every night. This is one of the games that I really missed when I finished, even just for driving in L.A. with music of the 1920's playing.



Game 2: Assassin's Creed: Unity - 20 hours [February 12] [PS4]

Rating: 6.5

The game is beautiful, but this has to be my least favorite Assassin's Creed so far. Relative to everything else, the framerate and pop-in didn't even bother me. The writing is dense. The modern sections were the worst yet and only helped to ruin the ambience of the game. The combat was not enjoyable. Arno as a main character was completely forgettable and I didn't get his motivation. Most of the major historical events were limited to the co-op missions, and it was terrible how these could all be played out of order. The French Revolution is one period in history that I've really studied, and I didn't feel that this game did it any justice. I had no idea which side of the revolution my character or the assassins were on; main historical figures like Robespierre were barely included. I was playing Red Dead Redemption at the same time as this game, and after that and L.A. Noire, it really showed me how much worse Ubisoft's storytelling is in comparison. Ubisoft really needs to get this series back on track with some direction. I have a new appreciation for Black Flag now and I'm hoping Rogue is better.



Game 4: The Order: 1886 - 10 hours [March 3] [PS4]

Rating: 8.0

Unity may have been the best looking game I'd played, but The Order is on another level. As a whole, I liked it and feel most reviews were way too harsh on it. The execution of the ending was flawed, but it's an interesting world that has been created for the series. The gunplay was great. With so many open world games now, it was nice to play a game more focused and linear for a change.



Game 5: Red Dead Redemption - 15 hours [March 10] [Xbox360]

Rating: 9.5

Brilliant game. I started in 2012 and don't know why it took me so long to finish it. After finishing L.A. Noire I finally went back to this in the middle of Mexico. It's definitely one of my top three games of the last generation, with Mass Effect 2 and The Last Of Us. I was surprised by the ending, but it had definitely been foreshadowed. Rockstar's storytelling is just brilliant, the way the conversations focus on the way people of the time think and how these ideas are driving history. Even more so than L.A. Noire, it's a fascinating look at the development of America. Now I've got to play Undead Nightmare.


Now playing:

• Alien: Inquisition
• Batman: Arkham Origins
• DRIVECLUB
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
• Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare
• Super Smash Bros Wii U

Original Post

Game 11: Valiant Hearts: The Great War (6 Hours)(PS4) – 3/10/2015

Not to much to say about this game... I thought they presented a lot about WWI in a fun and creative way. The story was engaging, although at times with the different characters lost its focus. The puzzles were a bit to easy and much to repetitive for my tastes and i found i could only manage an hour or so at a time before growing tired of the formula.

Game 12: Ori and the Blind Forest (13 Hours)(XBox One) – 3/14/2015

What a game! Visually beautiful, the world wonderfully crafted, and the controls just a pure joy to play with. I was expecting a bit more of story given the E3 trailer but i cant say i minded all that much and enjoyed the gameplay and exploring so much more. It was a joy exploring each area before moving on and acquiring a new skill only to remember an area in the previous section suddenly accessible. The skills were all fun, linked well with each other, and provided a challenge to master. I didn't find the game overly difficult, but i had found many health and spirit containers before making it to the more difficult stages of the game. The only section i didn't quite care for was the forlorn ruins and the gravity movement. It was about the only time during the game that i felt myself struggling with the controls. Outside of that each section was wonderfully crafted with great flow offering a wide array of approaches as to how you use your skills to move around.

Been a while since I updated, just finished my 20th game. original post


Game 18: Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines
Playtime: 49:00
Start/Finish: Mar 3rd, 2015 - Mar 11th, 2015
// This game got me hyped enough that I actually made a thread on NeoGAF for once; the OT for it. It didn't disappoint. I'd still be playing it now if I didn't have other games I wanted to play right now. Just an outright amazing game.
--

Game 19: Ys II
Playtime: 7:40
Start/Finish: Jan 27th, 2015 - Mar 11th, 2015
// A lot better than the first game, combat and story wise. But I still like the first game as much as this one, hard to pick a favorite. Excited to finally play Ys Oath next.
--

Game 20: Tales of Hearts R
Playtime: 45:38
Start/Finish: Feb 24th, 2015 - Mar 14th, 2015
// My first venture into the Tales series. I really liked this game, great character interactions, combat, and story. Hell, even the character I thought I'd hate the most became my favorite at the end. It was a great adventure and I can't wait to try some other Tales games I've missed.
--

Game 12-14 Update



Game 12: Pandemic 2 - ?? hours [Browser, March 5th]
# I played this game on and off when I was sitting around between classes. I have some brief thoughts. Its not easy to accomplish the goal. It really does just make you hate Madagascar and Cuba. It was interesting and a decent game. Didn't really keep track of what time I spent on it.

Game 13: Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines - ?? hours [Vita, March 11th]
# I'm going to save my extended thoughts on this for later. Why? Because I want to play it again and do better with my planning. I sort of cheesed my way into the ending in this case, and I want to plan better this time. Yes, I'm going to play this twice for this list. Given every playthrough is 30-100 hours, I feel as though its justified. I will say this though. As of now... Best game of 2015.

Game 14: Tales of Heart R - 28 hours [Vita, March 13th]
# Probably the most fun I've had with a Tales combat system yet (I have played Symphonia and Xillia 2). Maybe I'm just getting better at it. The cast is likeable, the plot isn't as predictable as I thought it'd be (other than the ending), and the gameplay is quite fun. Its probably my least favorite of the three I've played, but it was a great experience regardless.

Original Post

Oh god, how do I link to my original post?

It's this: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=145575535&postcount=279

But how do I change it so it says what everyone else's says? Thanks. Please PM me with a link to some basic HTML website cuz I keep trying this and it keeps not working!

Making my post look prettier and more fun.

Edit: Got it.

Original Post

03-13-15 - Game 23: Sequence - 10 hours
I bought this game a bunch of years ago when I was still a lurker. I admired Feep for giving the game away and the game sounded cool so I decided to buy it to support him. I didn't click with it. At all. I almost hated it for making me feel so utterly worthless. I even threw it into my "meh" category on Steam and gave up on it.
Until There Came an Echo. I got that game from Feep for free (so fucking amazing of you!) and felt I really had to give Sequence another chance. I'm SO happy I did that. Suddenly I just loved it all. Went for all achievements and had a blast through the whole game. Recommending it to everyone, even the "musically challenged"



03-13-15 - Game 24: Long Live the Queen - 4 hours (this year)
Went though my "completed" category on Steam to uninstall all games in there and when I clicked on this game I realised there were cheevos I didn't have. I was very confused since I had gotten all endings, deaths and cheevos before. Then I saw the recent update! A couple more cheevos to collect and lots of great improvements. I wholeheartedly recommended the game before and now it's even better. Had so much fun going through it 6 times to find all the new stuff



03-14-15 - Game 25: Cinders - 7 hours
I liked my first playthough of this VN. It looks great, the writing is okay, the characters are interesting and I like that the goal isn't to date someone but to live whatever life you want. I didn't really like the second playthrough because so many scenes were identical. I of course started to use the "skip button" but the thing is that it stops skipping (so you have to press it again) all the time. I then played it a third time and tried to make all the choices different to see if that was the problem but the scenes still didn't change much at all. Some new ones of course since I went to other places with other people, but the ones where I just chose other things to say had maybe a couple different lines and then it was back to the same thing as the first and second one. And there is a lot of text in this one (especially coming from LLtQ, heh).
The game has four endings with a bunch of variants, and variants of those depending on love interest and "advisor" but I wouldn't recommend even four playthroughs unless you don't mind seeing basically the same things up until the end. One playthrough I can recommend tho, maybe two if you play them completely different. It's worth reading even with these "problems".

(Main post)

OG post: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=145803883&postcount=448

#10 Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations


Well,AA is my favorite franchise in games,so you already know how i fell about this one. But DAMN,they picked an already excellent game that was Justice for All and went godlike level on it. The cases,especially the last one,were all excellent,all extremely well crafted,with great twists. And Godot is the best character ever,mostly because of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGcyKEZtWuE

Game 14: Stranded (PC) - 1 hour
Bad game. Point and click adventure game that is really short. It's artificially longer than it should because you're forced to click twice instead of once and because the character walks very slowly. Same environment several times. No real puzzle. The payoff isn't worth it.



Game 15: Pivvot (PC) - 1.6 hour
Similar concept to Super Hexagon, but easier and more manageable. You have to avoid obstacles while following a curved line. Pivvot has as several modes, which is great. It's fun, but it won't keep you're interest for a long time. The soundtrack is good. I thought playing with a controller was better.



Game 16: There Came an Echo (PC) - 5.1 hours
I'm sad to report that... I really didn't like that game. Sorry Feep. To me it's more of an experiment. The game was created around voice recognition, and the design is hampered in a lot of ways. You can't move around freely. The mission are completely linear. A lot of issues with simultaneity of controls. I'm not sure real time was a good choice. Camera is all over the place. Loadouts don't really make a different except for a couple of missions. There are moments where one character stops shooting for no reason. Even if you give him an order. The game is also quite short, and a large chunk isn't gameplay. Since I played Sequence, I enjoyed and understood the story, even if it got weird near the end. Writing and voice acting is hit or miss. Visually, Iridium needs to learn to animate better. In my opinion, Sequence was a much better game.


Original Post

Hikami said:

Game 19: Ys II
Playtime: 7:40
Start/Finish: Jan 27th, 2015 - Mar 11th, 2015
// A lot better than the first game, combat and story wise. But I still like the first game as much as this one, hard to pick a favorite. Excited to finally play Ys Oath next.

Click to expand...

You're in for a treat, Oath is amazing. Also have you played Origin already? It's a prequel to Ys I&II.

Finished this one yesterday:

Game 8: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers 28h 38m (New 3DS)

I really like the old school artstyle in this game.
Great cast of characters and NPC's. Mechanics are pretty deep.
Game goes from very easy to damn hard in matters of hours. I'm glad I finished it tho.

Main Post

GAME #9: Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (2014)
| Rating: ★★★½ | Platform: PS4 | Developer: Crystal Dynamics, Nixxes Software |

I played the original on PC two years ago and hadn't felt the need to go back. Looking back I'm split. There's a lot of things I still like. There's a lot I don't like. The core game is good and there's intense gameplay in the moment-to-moment side of things. It's in the over-all package that things start to come apart.

The game has no introduction. The first act is missing. Then we're introduced to an overly large cast of supporting character whose only function is to give Lara some humanity. The interesting is that Lara doesn't lack humanity. She lacks humour. I like Tomb Raider: Legend and consider it the best game in the series (though, I think that is in need of a playthrough soon) simply because Lara was a fun person. The supporting cast is as misplaced there as it is here. They act like the Scooby-gang. They follow Lara along filling no function but to add tension when you need a life-or-death scenario.

So, gameplay-wise it's solid. The definitive edition does add some stuff to the over-all package. But what I find surprisingly good is the cinematic presentation. Not the cutscenes but the interaction of the gameplay camera and the environment. The puzzles are okay. Even though I'm split wether or not it's a really good game or not I still find it one of the most entertaining games out there. A guilty pleasure.

Original post

Game #18: BioShock



This is a complicated one. There is a lot to love about BioShock, but the game seemed to try its best to make me hate it. I did enjoy it, a lot (otherwise I would have dropped it), but the game is a huge mess, at least on PC. Some annoying bugs like the configs resetting, the game suddenly having no sound and the weirdest one, the past few days the game wouldn't boot unless I had something connected in the microphone port.

Bugs aside, the issues the game have are rather subjective, I don't know if I should even call them "issues". Like, I appreciate the game tells it story without using stupid cutscenes all the time, but an action game with a narrated story... Well, lets say it is quite complicated to fight the splicers and big daddies and pay attention to the story at the same time, specially when you are not a native English speaker. So as I said, it is a subjective issue, since I doubt native speakers were bothered by that. The second issue is the awful gunplay. I am not big on shooter, so maybe the gunplay is actually supposed to be good, but I can't say I enjoyed it. I started liking the game a LOT more once I started using only plasmids and the wrench.

Onto the good things, the game has an amazing atmosphere, it manages to be creepy, even though the game clearly isn't attempting to be a horror game. The gameplay, gunplay aside, is solid and the story is interesting, from what I gathered, at least (I am going to read more about it soon, because I am sure I missed some important details).

Overall, it is a great game, I think!

1-20 | 21-40 | 41-60 | 61-68



Game 41: Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven
Playtime: 43:27
Start/Finish: May 31st, 2015 - June 9th, 2015
//Comments
--
Game 42: Valkyria Chronicles DLC
Playtime: 3:12
Start/Finish: June 11th, 2015 - June 12th, 2015
//Comments
--
Game 43: Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker
Playtime: 50:02
Start/Finish: May 5th, 2015 - June 17th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 44: Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker - Triangulum Arc
Playtime: 25:16
Start/Finish: June 17th, 2015 - June 21st, 2015
//Comments
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Game 45: Tales of the Abyss
Playtime: 55:45
Start/Finish: April 22nd, 2015 - June 24th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 46: Fire Emblem if (白夜王&#22269
Playtime: 29:51
Start/Finish: June 24th, 2015 - June 29th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 47: Higurashi When they Cry - Ch.1 Onikakushi
Playtime: 14:18
Start/Finish: June 30th, 2015 - July 5th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 48: Tales of Symphonia
Playtime: 41:19
Start/Finish: June 25th, 2015 - July 9th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 49: Eternal Senia
Playtime: 3:20
Start/Finish: July 10th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 50: Shin Megami Tensei IV
Playtime: 50:39
Start/Finish: July 4th, 2015 - July 12th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 51: Jigoku Kisetsukan
Playtime: 2:00
Start/Finish: July 12th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 52: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
Playtime: 2:00
Start/Finish: July 17th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 53: Zero Escape Vol.1: 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors (Replay)
Playtime: 30:41
Start/Finish: July 5th, 2015 - July 21st, 2015
//Comments
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Game 54: Rocket League
Playtime: 19 hours (100% )
Start/Finish: July 17th - July 25th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 55: World End Economica Episode 2
Playtime: 9:00
Start/Finish: July 24th, 2015 - July 25th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 56: Zero Escape Vol. 2: Virtue's Last Reward (Replay)
Playtime: 39:40
Start/Finish: July 22nd, 2015 - July 31st, 2015
//Comments
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Game 57: Danganronpa 2 (Replay)
Playtime: 25:00 (100% )
Start/Finish: July 31st, 2015 - August 6th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 58: Tales of Graces f
Playtime: 35:55
Start/Finish: July 12th, 2015 - August 8th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 59: Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition
Playtime: 70:00
Start/Finish: August 8th, 2015 - August 24th, 2015
//Comments
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Game 60: Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Playtime: 19:20
Start/Finish: September 1st, 2015 - September 6th, 2015
//Comments

Original Post

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Criteria: All endings completed.
Time played: 32 hours

Right. So this was pretty fucking amazing...

Dunno what to say it about it really, other than it's very easily my favourite game of those I've played this year. The only real criticism I have against it is that a few of the escapes came more down to pixel hunting rather than actually solving a puzzle, but this wasn't really a common issue, and has existed to some extent in every game of this type I've ever played. Oh, and my first ever playthrough happened to lead to the one path you really shouldn't arrive at first, lol. Other than that though, I loved every moment of this, and ended up sitting up until about 8am this morning playing through the final story path. Thank god for the weekend...

Will definitely be looking to start VLR soon.

Synth said:

I loved every moment of this, and ended up sitting up until about 8am this morning playing through the final story path.

Click to expand...

Happens to everyone. Be prepared, because the same thing will happen when you play VLR. Anyways, welcome to the team, 999 is really fucking good.

Can DLC like the Last Of Us: Left Behind or Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry count as separate for this?

If the games gonna have reversed jump & shoot controls, can anyone blame me for cheating on Mega Man?! Another series of short games ta pad out my beaten game count commences!


Games Beaten: 14 / 52
Total Playtime: 82 hours, 27 minutes

01 - ??

Drewton said:

Can DLC like the Last Of Us: Left Behind or Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry count as separate for this?

Click to expand...

I plan on counting Left Behind separately myself, especially since I finished TLoU last year. It's really a matter of your own rules that you've come up with. Freedom Cry and Left Behind are in the ballpark of the length of something like inFAMOUS: First Light, and I already counted that as its own game.

Drewton said:

Can DLC like the Last Of Us: Left Behind or Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry count as separate for this?

Click to expand...

I'd even go as far as counting The Last of Us: Factions as a seperate game, but that's just me.

the original post

12. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC) - 26 hours;

Click to expand...

This was okay. The different approaches to solving a situation are usually fun enough and lead to decently varied gameplay. It was more thought-out than other games in that regard, but the story still was kinda ridiculed if you went with dark side decisions. The story in general fell apart towards the end, but it at least had several decent moments and locales that felt like classic Star Wars before that. Though even then, some of the first locations were also pretty bad. The combat got more fun as you unlocked more powers. A real downer was the menu system though. In fact, all the menus were a hot mess. They were anything but intuitive and lacked standards introduced in the SNES era. God forbid you actually want to find a specific item in there (and there's tons) and I'm glad you could at least automatically arrange your party member's stats, so I didn't have to deal with the horrid menus longer than necessary. It was also clunky in other areas. Characters would get stuck randomly on the map too often and my first ending was glitched. Graphics aren't the greatest either, Metroid Prime (which I've replayed recently) came out around the same time and KOTOR can't be much bigger than that title, but MP still looks much better. Soundtrack was pretty good though. Still a solid title with more strenghts than weaknesses, but not the GOAT some wanna make it out to be.

13. 3D OutRun (3DS) - 3h30m;


First time I've played this, since no other Sega Collection I've found ever really had this, but I've finally got it and it's pretty awesome. Driving feels pretty good for its time, it feels fast and I love the locales, with their bright and somewhat cartoony look, which racing games never really duplicated. The 3D effect is great, it is in fact amazing how this sprite based 2D title all of a sudden becomes a threedimensional racer. For this version, they've also added a couple of enhancements for your car which you unlock after reaching a goal, giving it somewhat of a campaign. It's not very profound, but still appreciated. I will certainly come back to this title for a round here and there in the future. The only slight annoyance I've encountered is a sometimes unlucky traffic.

Orginal Post

Finished:
6.The Banner Saga

10.Hotline Miami 2

On hold:
11.Life is Strange.
Waiting for more episodes.

New Post for 28-51

1-27



Game Beaten #28 Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell (X360) - 12 Hours
(Started 3/14/15 / Finished 3/15/15)
This can easily be beaten in a few hours but when you do everything but grinding kills before you beat the game it racks up a good 12 hours. As a dlc this would have been great, as a stand alone dlc its funny but feels like a let down. The first few story cutscenes are hilarious and then the ending just peters out. Game play wise the game is a blast start to finish but its all side activities so if you don't enjoy that stuff you'll hate this game.



Game Beaten #29 Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (PSP) - 2 Hours
(Started & Finished 3/22/15)
When I bought this 5 years ago I thought this was like a 4th Darkstalkers, and it turns out to be a collection of 1-3. Oh well! This game is still fun and I cleared it with Morrigan.



Game Beaten #30 Atelier Rorona Plus: The Alchemist of Arland (Vita) - 30 hours
(Started 2/25/15 / Finished 4/5/15)
So this was my first Atelier game and I was hoping this would click for me and it really did. It almost felt like a light parody at times of JRPGs when battling, the crafting became strangely addicting, and the bonkers cast was well out there. My only gripes are more personal than the games fault. I got the normal ending and had popularity of 25% because I never knew how decorations worked. I also had no clue how to make weapons since I'd bring the requirements to Hagel and well nothing would happen. I'm doing overtime mode at the moment and maybe I'd do a New Game + but likely not, got a lot more I want to play out there.



Game Beaten #31 Final Fantasy XIII (X360) - 69 Hours
(Started 3/4/15 / Finished 4/6/15)
Where do I start on this train wreck? Everyone who knows this game is terrible did the smart thing and either avoided or dropped it. The people that like this game are far too gone from listening to any rhyme or reason. So I'll start with the good points because that is pretty quick. The music is on point, the graphics are beautiful, and the set pieces are also well designed. Ok I'm done.

The battle system is an auto attack, automatic mess that can be thankfully easily abused by constantly shifting paradigm's to get an instant attack. I will also praise the game for making status effects mean something when so few games I feel like get that right.

The story is one of the stupidest things I've ever played through. Without going into heavy spoilers (keep reading for that) it is a contradicting mess that actually manages to find itself written into a corner and a excuse is needed to explain the unexplainable within this games own world's rules. There are moments the characters manage to shine through the mud of sloppy, ugly writing covering them but it isn't often.

The hallway complaint really doesn't bother me, a lot of RPGs have become this. My issue is the on rails storyline progression with the constant party splits are enough to drive someone mad. It is no wonder many people gave up on this before investing 30-40 hours until you reach Gran Pulse. No sane person should. Your reward for freedom of Gran Pulse is the punishment of the story abandoning you. The game throws you in a situation where you can go anywhere but everything will kill you unless you take the time to explore, level, and do missions for cool rewards. It's the equivalent of a holiday episode randomly thrown into your favorite TV show, nothing happens and everyone abandons everything in the name of celebrating the holidays. Except in this case they are on a time limit on this quest and instead just wander aimlessly through Gran Pulse. The sense of urgency you had in the first 10 chapters? Gone.

When the game finally gets back on course This writing seriously gave me a damn headache. Spare yourself from this nonsense.



Game Beaten #32 Tappingo (3DS) - 10 Hours
(Started 2014 / Finished 4/10/15)
Tappingo is like the long lost cousin to picross. The objective is to unwrap tiles to make the picture but if a tile can only unfold 5 times, that is all you can do to complete the stage. It makes you look at the game at a different angle than you would initially think. Unfortunately most of what you make, like Picross, is very boring and the game fails to hold long term interest. The 103 puzzles feel like they take forever. On the flip side if you like puzzle games for the 3 or 4 bucks on the eshop you can get a solid ten hours of puzzles in.



Game Beaten #33 Gunman Clive 2 (3DS) - 2 Hours
(Started 4/9/15 / Finished 4/15/15)
Much like the first game this is a short 2 hour Mega Man clone set somewhat in the Wild West. Unlike the first game, Clive 2 abandons the West pretty fast for gravity levels, sky stages, jungle levels, dinosaur levels, and even a few star fox tribute stages. If you need a cheap Mega Man fix than seek this out on the 3DS eshop.



Game Beaten #34 Welcome Park (Vita) - Unknown
(Started 8/1/12 / Finished 4/17/15)
The sliding puzzles are really not bad with the trick of taking a picture of a colored number grid. Welcome Park is a showcase for what the vita can do and since it is free, it really isn't bad at all. All trophies get!



Game Beaten #35: Goat Simulator (X360) - 4 Hours
(Started 4/17/15 / Finished 4/18/15)
I played this last year on Steam but was super happy to see this on Xbox 360. The game is a blast to play and it was fun chasing the achievements. Aside from Flappy Goat, that little mini game caused me so much anger.



Game Beaten #36 Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PSN) - 4.5 Hours
(Started/Finished 4/19/15)
Another game I did last year. Replayed for a game of the month club I'm in but on PSN this time instead of X360. Still find it to be a beautiful game, and oh so sad.



Game Beaten #37 Paint Park Plus (Vita) - 10 Minutes
(Started/Finished 4/20/15)
Was told about this game after finishing Welcome Park, it's a badly designed Paint app with easy trophies!



Game Beaten #38 Yoshi's New Island (3DS) -5.5 Hours
(Started 4/3/15 / Finished 4/21/15)
My opinions are mixed because the game feels like a bad remake of the SNES game but it's actually a sequel. As a game standing on its own it isn't awful it just doesn't feel particularly creative, something that the series has always been good at. The only element added for this release was giant eggs and while they are cool their isn't a lot they can do with them. There is zero challenge, lives are given out like candy, and each level rarely deviates from a straight line.



Game Beaten #39 Tennis In The Face (Vita) - 3 Hours?
(Finished 4/23/15)
So this is a strange Angry Birds clone about a tennis player with anger issues caused by a soda that is addicting and can cause explosions (of both temper and actual). You bounce tennis balls or cans of EXPLODZ in stages to knock out the stages enemies (clowns, cops, nerds, other stereotypes). Easy trophy list too because you don't need to 3 star any levels. The downside is the balls have a mind of their own, precision bouncing is simply luck of the draw.



Game Beaten #40 Dead or Alive 4 (X360) - An Hour
(Started & Finished 4/25/15)
This was the last Dead Or Alive title I needed to finish to beat them all at this point in time. 4 reminds me a lot of 3 but more polished. In fact its hard to spot new things in this and just easily spot elements from 3 that have been made better.



Game Beaten #41 Chronovolt (Vita)
(Started 2012? / Finished 4/27/15)
This game was given on plus some time ago and has been on my vita forever. The game is like the lovechild of Marble Blast Ultra with PoP: Sands of Time's rewind mechanic. It's a pretty hastily thrown together glitchy mess that I'd have trouble arguing if it is worth even 99 cents much less the likely 10 or 15 this is on the PS Store. The game just doesn't work and that isn't fun.



Game Beaten #42 Town of Salem (PC) - 6 Hours...yeah It took awhile to win a single game
(Started & Finished 4/28/15)
It's like Mafia or Epic Mafia but with some music and graphics. It's ok but their aren't enough roles like Epic Mafia to make it something you constantly want to return too. The music though is excellent!



Game Beaten #43 Valiant Hearts: The Great War (PC) - 15 Hours
(Started 2014 / Finished 4/28/15)
There were times I felt I could relate to the never ending war as this game dragged on. The story and character building never feels rushed, and for a game with no dialog (although some awesome narration) it feels like a full experience. The ending is touching and any happy ending this game can give feels like a victory, any tiny little drop. My only negative comment would be the Canadian gets seriously 5 seconds of screen time (why was he even in the logo or introduced?)



Game Beaten #44 Super Luigi U (Wii U) - 10 Hours
(Started 2014 / Finished 4/28/15)
Every level has 99 seconds and the difficulty is masochist level. Seriously each level is a damn death trap. The game is the same layout as the original game but the levels are themed all over the place. Don't get me wrong it has great ideas and some extremely frustrating ones. Oh and yes they made Luigi a pain in the neck to control like every game in the last ten years



Game Beaten #45 Toejam & Earl (PSN) - 3 Hours
(Started & Finished 4/30/15)
This is my third time in my life playing this game and each time I'm amazed how evil the enemies are. Some will never bother you like the viking or wizard. Others like the ice cream truck, mad doctor, invisible stabbing guys, and bees are just pure evil. They can easily knock you off the level sending you down a floor or just take all of your life in one swoop. The random present mechanic is still such a great idea and makes me so excited for the kickstarted game coming.



Game Beaten #46 Reality Fighters (Vita) - 3 Hours
(Started 2014 / Finished 5/2/15)
I had this for a long time but only started it to help someone with an online trophy. My biggest pet peeve is placing the fighters in an AR background and then having to maneuver the Vita in some awkward position to see what you are doing. The actual fighting though is quite a lot of fun, it isn't the deepest thing but it is friendly to newcomers and very easy to learn. The story mode was also mildly fun.



Game Beaten #47 .detuned (PS3) - 2 Hours...don't laugh
(Started & Finished 5/6/15)
This is more of a mess around app than a game but it's a 'game' technically. It really feels more like a strange early 1990s take on the internet in a music video than anything. Couldn't get the song Eiffel 65 - Blue out of my head playing this game.



Game Beaten #48 Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned (X360) - 8 Hours
(Started 2009? / Finished 5/7/15)
The Lost and Damned is a good stand alone expansion to GTA4. The problems of a boring protag are removed with this game because Johnny is a very fun character. He even meets lots of lively characters, and brushes with GTA4's own storyline. The issue for me is the biker gang motif doesn't feel like it was hit well especially watching shows like Sons of Anarchy. They don't find a way to make the riding in groups happen often. What happens when it does occur is slowdown and pop-in, everyone's least favorite aspects about sandbox titles. The overall story feels a little off because time passes between missions and it really is never clear how much. The brushes with GTA4's plot helps and hinders because it is very shocking how two missions can be so close in Johnny's story but so far in Niko's.



Game Beaten #49 Super Double Dragon (SNES) - A few hours?
(Started & Finished 5/8/15)
This game is forgotten but it stands up decently. The blocking/counter button makes every boss really vulnerable. Not that you have any idea how much health enemies or bosses have because they don't tell you. They also don't even let you know when you are fighting a boss because the music doesn't even have a hint at it. The game suddenly ended on me and I sat there confused.



Game Beaten #50 Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PS1) - 6 Hours
(Started 5/6/15 / Finished 5/8/15)
Klonoa is a really interesting platformer that despite being an ugly 3D platformer manages to remain really creative. The use of 3D planes in this 2D platformer along with fore/background being interactive to an extent is really neat. It feels like it has pieces of Yoshi's Island, Tomba, and many other platformers stuffed inside of it.



Game Beaten #51 Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure (3DS) - 11 Hours
(Started 2014 / Finished 5/9/15)
The random missions are boring, the story missions are boring. I like the DC stuff but it's not a saving grace for the lack of puzzles. The best moment of the game is taking on Sinestro's Corp by picking a lantern of your choice to summon that corp. Otherwise this game was the worst game since the first entry.

52+

3. Kira-Kira Star Night

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Synth said:

Right. So this was pretty fucking amazing...

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No kidding, great stuff. I'm glad you liked it, I played it last year and loved it as well.

MM2 & 3 have been beaten! Or is it 2 & III? I dun get the numbering system! Gamecubes dpad is a pain on my thumb but I'll keep powering on through the anniversary collection!


Games Beaten: 16 / 52
Total Playtime: 84 hours, 26 minutes

01 - ??

Reila said:

Happens to everyone. Be prepared, because the same thing will happen when you play VLR. Anyways, welcome to the team, 999 is really fucking good.

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Thanks. I'm required to take at least a week off work before the end of april or simply lose the holiday allowance as we roll into the new fiscal year. With no real plans, I've seriously started to think about just making it a VLR week.

Axass said:

No kidding, great stuff. I'm glad you liked it, I played it last year and loved it as well.

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Yea, I'd been meaning to play it for a while now, but I was at most expecting to like it somewhat. Wasn't expecting to enjoy it to anywhere near the extent that I did.

Triggerhappytel said:

Original post (updated)

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10. The Room Two (Android) - 14th March - approx. 2 hours
I absolutely loved this. Improved on the first game by making the puzzles much broader, more intricate and multi-layered. The visuals, music and atmosphere are so incredible and I find the premise really intriguing. Really look forward to whatever Fireproof Games are developing next. 9/10

11. Apotheon - 15th March - approx 12 hours
I really enjoyed this overall. A solid platform adventure with elements of Metroidvania, although I found the combat a bit messy and hectic most of the time. The bosses were great for the most part and I found it a really interesting and refreshing take on the Greek Gods, despite having played six different God of War games. The visuals were great and the soundtrack utterly brilliant, and overall I thought it was really solid and enjoyable. My only bugbear was that it crashed on me numerous times, so I hope the developer is able to fix it via a patch. 8/10

I'm now playing Sleeping Dogs and Helldivers.

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Original Post - Part 2

Game #21: The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition: 6.3 hours

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I think this was good. I dunno I guess I'm not in the mood for so much adventure game logic at the moment. Story was pretty good, though there was a lot of slowly walking back and forth between places. The inclusion of the version switch was nice, but I played it mostly in the modern mode. The hint system was a little busted too, sometimes it would trigger an event far in the future and start trying to teach you how to solve it.

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Game 10: The Evil Within (PS4) - 15h23m54s, New Game+ [3/17/15] ★★★★


Finished my New Game+ that I started just after beating the game the first time, in preparation for The Assignment DLC.

Got a handful more trophies, and found a few more collectibles. Still a little bit short; I'm missing one document, one newpaper and 4-5 map pieces. Also came just short of fully upgrading Sebastian. I think all that remains are two or three upgrades for the crossbow bolts, and that's it. I'll probably do one more playthrough in a few years or something just to cross everything off, and then maybe a run on Nightmare difficulty. But I'm considering this one done for the time being.

Steam Link

#8 - The Wolf Among Us (12 hours, PS4)
After playing Telltale's The Walking Dead and being pleasantly surprised, I had to play their other games too - I've already reviewed Back To The Future.I didn't know about the Fables comics that the game is based on - I thought it was a original universe. What I knew about this game is the main character could transform into a wolf and that there were other fantasy characters in play (like a talking Toad). The characters are based on fables (hence the comic's name, I suppose) like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and so on. That was an amazing realization and it got me hooked on the universe right away. You know the characters and you probably know most of the stories they are in. As such almost all characters have some characterization before the game even starts and that really helps the game - because there are a lot of people and creatures in play, and a good handful of them makes up the more important part of the story.

The story takes place in Fabletown - a town inhabited by fables that have left their stories. A murder happens and you (Bigby Wolf) as the town's detective must solve it. I won't spoil anymore of the story as it has to be experienced. Like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us focuses on story and choices rather than puzzles like Back To The Future and earlier games from Telltale. There are a couple of decisions that need to be made and depending on how you want to handle a situation, the path to solving the murder mystery changes slightly. There are also some smaller subtle decisions that you can make that improve/hurt your relationship with characters - these are the ones I liked the most. You may make a choice early on that is the morally correct thing to do, but it is also the one that hurts other characters later on, like (Side character spoiler) . I never really felt the choices had any huge impact on the story and I was really bummed about that. I felt that no matter my decisions and who to rat out or who to support would make any noteworthy change in how the game played out. The sense of choice is there, but ultimately it does not matter.

The characters and story is what I really loved in this game. I feel the characters are pretty stretched out and you care about the most important ones. It definitely helps that you know most of the characters beforehand and seeing them in this gritty world is super interesting. A huge part of why I really enjoyed this game is probably because of the universe with well known characters - I doubt it would have been as amazing if everything was created from scratch with new and unkown characters. That would require alot more characterization of the chracters. That said, The Wolf Among is my favorite game from Telltale - but that's most likely because I loved the (already established) universe,

After playing this game I've actively sought the Fables comics because I was really invested in the universe.

Original Post.

Edit: Something I never mentioned in the review, that's not really relevant either. The eye-animations. Even though the game is well animated and a good-looker, the eye-animations are hilarious. I can only describe them by comparing them to Team America: World Police. It's like the eyeballs are a seperate entity and when they open/close their eyes, it just looks funny. Sorry about that input, I wanted to mention it but I totally forgot it.

Games 1 - 20
Games 21+

Game 23: Last Window: The Secret of Cape West

I remember Hotel Dusk as a flawed experience. It was so fresh that it was really enjoyable for the first few chapters, but when the novelty wore off the game just became a slog, then a chore. And by the end, I kind of questioned whether I'd enjoyed it at all. It's been ages since I played it, so imagine my surprise when I discover that there was a sequel I had no idea about. And sure enough, the first few chapters I'm in love, and by the end I'm wondering why the hell I even bothered. Now, the storytelling is among the most mature in any game, but the story itself is just boring garbage. By about chapter 8 I was thinking that if this were a film it wouldn't have lasted even 2 hours without cutting a single bit of the experience. Kyle Hyde is an asshole, and his neighbors seem oblivious. The puzzles are contrived bollocks and the "gotcha" game overs are just terrible. What was I thinking.
If you liked Hotel Dusk, you'll like this

15h-ish. Beat Story Mode with all side missions and most Golden Bolts. R&C is like doing volunteer work you love: most of the time you have fun, but sometimes you think that you should get paid for that shit. Some sections, like the hoverboard missions, are so hopelessly dated. But the package is good so all in all it's still a solid winner.


Updated OP

MM4, Power Battles, 5, and 6 done! This Mega Marathons starting ta get to me now but there's only 3 to go!


Games Beaten: 20 / 52
Total Playtime: 88 hours, 21 minutes

01 - ??

Original post


14. Cities: Skylines (PC)
First city made it to 101,201 population, earning me the Metropolis achievement.
Cities: Skylines might be the year's biggest underdog story: a game made by a small developer in Finland succeeding where a triple-A title bankrolled by EA and built by the industry leader in the genre could not. The critical consensus of Cities: Skylines being "like SimCity but actually good" now verges on cliche, and the game's sold over half a million copies since its release just over a week ago.

So you already know the game is great. I do have a few quibbles, though. First, Skylines is pretty unstable once you have a large enough city. Depending on its mood, the game will toss a steady stream of odd error messages at you and occasionally crashes to desktop (once even locking up my computer). Second, once you get your city going, there's not that much to do in the endgame besides buy up more land and build things on top of it. Colossal Order's previous franchise, Cities in Motion, provided a campaign mode with specific quests you had to accomplish to move forward, as well as optional challenges you could finish for extra rewards. A goal-oriented transit simulator is a little different from a city simulator, which traditionally have been more sandbox-oriented, but challenges could have been one way for Skylines to carve out a unique identity by providing more direct goals to work towards.

Even without resorting to quests, though, the game could throw more challenges at you. Traffic is a significant issue in Skylines, but unless it's really awful your city doesn't really feel the effects of poorly planned road networks. A couple of bottlenecks here and there amount to little more than cosmetic blemishes, lengthy queues of trucks and cars the only real sign that something's amiss. Many problems can be solved with the judicious construction of service buildings, and many more are easily avoided with some forethought (hey, maybe don't put your dirty industry right next to your residential areas). It's too easy to maintain a stable metropolis; more importantly, you don't make enough interesting decisions along the way except what your road network and zoning should look like. That said, there's already a "hard mode" mod that punishes you more severely for having citizens that can't commute to their jobs within a reasonable timeframe, causing businesses to lose workers and citizens to lose jobs.

Speaking of mods, Skylines has an amazing mod community whose creations will add to the life of the game. I haven't touched any of them yet because I wanted to have at least one city with the vanilla experience, and I'll probably build more cities without any mods. But it's very tempting to start throwing in all sorts of additions, from new buildings to traffic analyzers to auto-bulldoze mods. There are even mods to add auto-saving to the game, which seems like an unparalleled level of extensibility (though to be fair, it would've been nicer if the game had auto-saving built in).

I feel like I've gone about as far as I can with my first city; everything from here on is just sketching out grid variations and plopping down zones, fire stations and schools. But other cities are just around the corner, with new topologies begging to be conquered by more efficient road networks built using the lessons I learned from my previous city. Maybe, if I'm really good, I can work towards a city with next to no car use, or a city with no heavy industry. I might even start making my own assets for the game, if I can wrap my head around Blender.

In case it isn't already obvious: if you have any interest whatsoever in city builders, check out Cities: Skylines. It's the finest city sim to come along in a very long time.

Update #5- Spring Break Edition

Original post here

Game #14- Jade Empire


Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: Xbox | Beaten: March 7th | Time: 23:02

While I always did like Jade Empire, I don't think I really came to appreciate just how good it really is until this playthrough. The world is wonderfully well realized, and maybe the most unique one that Bioware has ever crafted- it's a fantasy land mostly stripped away of the tired D&D and Lord of the Rings conventions so prevalent in Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age that so many people complain are too frequent in the genre. It's a breath of fresh air, even all these years later, in a world born straight from eastern influences rather than western. The morality system, not of good and evil like KOTOR, but of kindness and practicality, made for a clear blueprint that the company watered down into the Paragon and Renegade systems for Mass Effect, but here they remain pure; there's no handy wheel to polarize your choices, there's only philosophy, and some surprisingly in-depth and unique ways to play things out.

Comabt is more akin to a real-time brawler than the standard Bioware KOTOR style of the time, another influence that was carried over, and I also feel, lost in modern games like Dragon Age 2/Inquisition. The fighting in Jade Empire maintains the feeling of depth- there are so many fun and unique fighting styles, and I never felt like I was grossly overpowering my foes. I never really touched the "harmonious combo" system, though, and it was never actually explained in-game; just a note on every talent that they could perform them and some loading screen messages. Nonetheless, I felt enthralled by every combat encounter in the game- never feeling like it was busy work like some encounters in Inquisition, or that it was meaningless railroading through empty hallways like Mass Effect 3.

The only places I really feel like Jade Empire struggles in comparison to its fellows, is that I don't think the party as well utilized as is the norm for Bioware. There's a real stand-out cast here: Henpecked Hou is really neat as both comic relief and a non-combat support party member, Wild Flower is adorable and a demon-possessed child isn't a frequent ally in gaming, Kang the Mad is super entertaining despite his hands-off involvement in the party and his ridiculously over-complex personal quest, Sagacious Zu has a really entertainingly unique perspective for a Bioware party member and the ultimate role he plays in the story is both awesome and ballsy, Zin Bu offers a really unique twist of the concepts of the afterlife as a member of the Celestial Bureaucracy, and while they may not be super unique in their individual roles, Silk Fox, Dawn Star and Sky are all memorable and entertaining party members. My problem is that the game ultimately fails to do too much with them. Example: Zin Bu is a member of the pantheon of gods, which in this universe is so vast and innumerable, there exists a God for pretty much every conceivable concept. Zin Bu used to be in charge of keeping records on the player for archival purposes; everyone has a personal records god apparently, but the player suddenly killing people and saving the world caused him to have so much paperwork that he fell behind and was demoted to being a lowly traveling merchant of heaven. That's crazy unique, incredibly interesting, and the only time you talk to him and get any kind of insight into the Celestial Bureaucracy is when you first meet and recruit him, all he does after that is prove a worthless shopkeep because his prices are too high, his sale prices are too low, and you don't need to shop that much in the game anyway. These are great characters and such a unique world, I just wish there was more fleshing it out and giving it time to shine, which goes in-hand with my second complaint- it feels too short. The first three chapters are meaty, full of sidequests and tons of content and cool characters- the final four feel like they're just sprinting between two boss battles to a finish line, throwing off the pacing and ending the experience faster than I like from these games. It feels like budget or time constraints forced them to really cut down on the amount of time spent in what would otherwise be the second half.

Nevertheless, this new playthrough of Jade Empire has really done a lot to reawaken me to how much I enjoy the game. It reminded me of back when I used to play a new Bioware game several times over and over and just become fully absorbed by the world and characters; I guess there's juts been enough time passed between my last playthrough that I forgot about how great it is, and I look forward to playing it again with a new philosophical alignment.

I remember always wanting a sequel; for a brief time though, I was glad we didn't get one- I wasn't sure that the Bioware that created Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3 could do a Jade Empire 2 justice. After Inquisition, I think I'm ready to hope again; I doubt we'll see anything more than updates to the Old Republic, the new Dragon Age and Mass Effect sequels, and whatever the new IP is, but still- even with little chance for a sequel, Jade Empire's a fantastically unique world, and I'll just have to keep mining this one for time spent in it.

Game #15- Batman: Arkham Origins: Blackgate



Rating: ★★★ | Platform: Vita | Beaten: March 11th | Time: 5:59

I really do love the concept of using a spin-off prequel game to explore more characters in an established setting, I love the idea of a full Metroidvania Batman game and think it suits the character moreso than any other genre, and I've missed portable spin-offs of console franchises this gen as both portable systems have floundered in comparison to mobile. Arkham Origins: Blackgate should be right up my alley- unfortunately, I feel like it falls short in some major capacities that keep it from living up to all that I would hope it to be.

The biggest stand-out problem to me is that the combat is an incredibly poor feeling attempt to translate the Rocksteady Freeflow Combat into a 2.5D metroidvania environment- and it just doesn't work. We've already seen time and time again that most devs can't even replicate the combat well in 3D environments- here, not only does it feel clunky and ineffective, but it actually feels like unresponsive. It has that problem a lot of freeflow pretenders have of the tracking between targets not working very well, and the same goes for the counter tracking- often I'll be fighting an enemy, and press the triangle button to counter someone attacking from behind, but not only does the counter not work because the guard is a few inches out of range (and their attack misses because of it anyway), but it breaks my combo. Throw on top of that, Blackgate has the whole Arkham City assortment of enemies- there's regular guys and gun guys and those are fine. Stealth is a little more finicky here, but it's totally fine, and the regular fights are bearable outside of the above issues with the core systems. It's the knife-wielding enemies, heavy-blocking enemies and the stun baton enemies that are a big problem in this one. Because of the perspective, it's extremely hard to tell which is which in a fight, and even harder to really control the flow of the fight. In the 3D games, these enemies force you to change up tactics- you have to prioritize guys with stun batons, and perform special takedowns on knife enemies, but here, the freeflow tracking makes actually picking out and eliminating specific enemies an unrewarding hassle.

Hand-in-hand with the combat being a disappointment, I was bummed to find that the boss battle, normally a highlight in the Arkham series, are just as disappointing. The best fights in the game are with Bronze Tiger and Catwoman- the Deadshot fight feels like it's just running through the same kind of thing seen in the last two games. Penguin just stands there and it's more of a challenge to draw his overpowered thugs away from him than a fight, while Joker's fight is a weirdly anti-climactic gimmick battle focused on using the line launcher to fly back and forth around a circular room, and Black Mask and Solomon Grundy are less boss fights and more environmental puzzles, with both going down in a single hit. Being a smaller scale game and set in the middle of Blackgate prison, I would have hoped that the game would focus more on smaller name Batman enemies. What they did with Bronze Tiger? That was neat. Would have been just as neat to see characters like Killer Moth, the Tweedles, Mad Hatter, Prometheus, or dozens of other interesting characters take the stage, instead of more tired and over-played Joker stuff.

I did really enjoy a lot of the game aside from these two points, though. Exploring Blackgate was a lot of fun- it took some time to get used to needing to scan with the touch screen constantly, and I would've rather them just incorporate a highlight in Detective Mode for objects like case files that need to be scanned and explosive gel walls like in the console games because I got tired of running my fingers over the Vita screen every time I ran into a new room while searching for collectibles. I also really enjoyed the story of the game- being able to choose which of the three major gangs you wanted to take out in order was a cool addition, and the hints at a bigger than Batman DC gaming universe are too tempting to ignore- after this and Origins, if we don't get a Suicide Squad game set in the Arkhamverse, I'm going to be severely disappointed.

Overall, I think I'd be okay recommending this game to someone looking for more Batman before Arkham Knight, but not wanting to run through an experience too similar to it so soon. It's far from perfect, but it's solid enough. I had an enjoyable time with it, and wouldn't mind seeing a sequel- I still maintain this is the best genre for Batman as a character.

Game #16- Battlefield: Bad Company



Rating: ★★★ | Platform: Xbox 360 | Beaten: March 12th | Time: 8:21

When it comes to first-person shooters, I've never been a Battlefield guy. If I had to pick a camp, the style of combat encounters and the general feel of Halo is what I gravitate towards, but I usually even prefer the trigger speed of Call of Duty to the feel of Battlefield. Still, the tone and comedy of Bad Company sounded really entertaining, and when I found it for really cheap, I decided to give it a shot anyway, despite hating Battlefield 3.

The combat feels a whole lot like Battlefield 3 did, naturally- what really stood out to me was the sheer size of each campaign level. I'm used to most FPS levels being centered around one objective, but Bad Company's levels are massive and actually feel like several COD-style levels wrapped in one. The size of the maps both highlights one of the neat things about the game, and one of my major issues with it. On the positive, it makes you use vehicles more- which leads to more of the super entertaining destruction mechanics that lead to really fun combat encounters on several levels- my favorite missions in the game were absolutely the ones where you pilot a helicopter through a huge base and the ones that let you hop into a boat and haul ass across the water. The negative it highlights though, is that I absolutely hate the natural mobility of the player character in a Battlefield game. It's so slow, plodding and ineffective feeling- moving around by foot feels boring, tiring and just isn't fun.

Overall, I thought Bad Company was just kind of forgettable. They sold it on wackiness and humor, but there wasn't really as much of it as I'd have liked. The destruction mechanics were really cool, but all-in-all, nothing about it really stands out to me.

Original Post

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Game 16: There Came an Echo - 4 hours
Awesomely interesting narrative with great voice acting. The premise and execution of the story is brilliant. It takes one of my favourite sci-fi ideas and takes it in a unique direction. The characters are all great and voiced by a star-studded cast. The environment art is incredible with a great aesthetic. The music is stellar. The gameplay is focused around voice controls and this game is the best execution of that mechanic. The strategy aspect is a little shallow but given the game is fully voice controlled, making it too difficult would make it frustrating. Overall a great game.

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Game 17: Tormentum Dark Sorrow - 4 hours
The most metal puzzle game I have ever played. The art style oozes quality and macabre. It is very reminiscent of Beksiński and Geiger (without the penises). The story is also incredibly grim to go along with the visuals. It plays like a point and click adventure with a bunch of puzzles and a few moral choices . The puzzles are mostly well done with a couple that made no sense, at least to me.

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Game 18: Strider 2014 - 7 hours
This is one of those no bullshit type games. Within 3 seconds of selecting Start Game you are straight into the action, slicing dudes up and taking on an entire tyrannical nation. No cutscenes, setup or briefing. There is no moral grey here; it's just you, the elite Strider Hiryu, vs the evil-doers of Kazakh. The best part, however, is the game's controls. It immediately feels satisfying to run, jump and slice your foes. Through usual metroidvania fashion, you explore, gain new abilities, become more powerful and take on stronger baddies. Once you have unlocked your full arsenal, you becoming an unstoppable killing machine as the game gives you a ton of mobility and combat options. The levels are well crafted and there is a ton of enemy variety to keep the game fresh from start to finish. The boss fights are all moderately challenging and satisfying to beat. The game has very crisp visuals and Strider's visual design is excellent. The animation work also deserves a special mention. The way Strider looks and moves is very cool. The music is catchy and invigorating which is a perfect fit for the game's high octane action. This game is now easily one of my favorite metroidvanias.

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Game 19: Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number - 8 hours
Pulpy. Brutal. Violence. The sequel to the 80's inspired break-neck speed action game does not disappoint. It builds on the original in many ways. Bigger levels, more enemy variety, more masks, more characters and an even more convoluted story. The trademark challenge and awesome music is also here. Somehow they made the soundtrack even better than the original which is a tremendous feat. Infinitely satisfying in every way, the game taps into your inner primal nature as you complete levels with perfectly choreographed grace. What ever Dennaton Games has planned next, I am already excited.

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Game 20: Counterspy - 5 hours
A cool stealth action game about a cool spy set during the cool cold war. The visuals for this game are immediately noticeable as it is very colorful and stylized. The game uses cel shading to animate and give depth to wartime propaganda posters. You play the role of spy without border and perform espionage operations on both sides of the iron curtain. The gameplay is half stealth and half shooter. You are required to be as stealthy as possible as notoriety will persist between levels and too much of it will result in mutually assured destruction (M.A.D). However, there are times when just have to murder every one in the room in order to progress. A full non-lethal stealth play through is impossible. This is not so bad as the mixture of stealth and murdering feels apt for the espionage theme of the game. The game is 2.5D, the levels are randomly generated and with every mission the difficulty increases. Your aim is to gather intel which will allow your agency to neutralize the nuclear war threat. But you also have to gather various upgrades and money to fund your operations. The game will make you chose between levels with a lot of intel, which will progress the game, and levels with a lot of resources, which will progress your character. Rushing to the endgame without enough upgrades will make the game really difficult. Likewise spending too much time on collecting upgrades will mean the difficulty will continue to curve up in later levels. This push and pull between completing the game and upgrading you character is really unique and interesting.

Original post


1/26/15 Game 5: Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater HD (Xbox 360) - 19hrs
Speechless. My first time playing this. Its much better than 2 but not 1. Its a great game in the series though. The espionage spy story is what kept me hooked. The music...No the snake eater track is amazing and I love its occurrence in the story. I can now fully understand this.



1/29/15 Game 6: Last of us Left Behind DLC (PS3)- 3hrs
I finished the game a long time ago I just never played the DLC so I went through it and I can say that I never had this many emotions in a dlc before. Truly a masterpiece of a video game. Whoever is a video gamer and hasn't played the last of us. Shame on you.


3/19/15 Game 7: Pokemon X(3DS)- 54hrs total playtime (and counting)
Just finished the main story and beat the elite 4. Played it for nostalgia sake because i haven't played a Pokemon game since red on the gba. This game looks great on the 3ds and its always fun catching Pokemon. playing competitively online is great also.

Update :

Game #6 : Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee - New 'n' Tasty!

Rating: ★★★★☆ - Platform: PS4 - Developer: Just Add Water
Finally, 18 years later, I can go through and fully appreciate this game for what it is, a brilliant platform game. I remember playing this on the original Playstation, I was only 12 at that time and gave up on the very first section of the game. The quicksave option helped a lot here and Just Add Water did a fantastic job remastering this gem with beautiful graphics while keeping the soul of the original game. Give me Abe's Exoddus now !

Original Post

I hope it's not too late to join this thread. Probably I haven't a big chance to beat 52 games in 1 year, but it should be fun. Last year I beat 30 games and going to finish more in 2015.

Game #1 : Driveclub

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 04/01/2015 | Time: 34:30 h

Game #2 : Welcome Park

Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 10/01/2015 | Time: 00:30 h

Game #3 : Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 13/01/2015 | Time: 08:00 h

Game #4 : Pixeljunk Shooter

Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: 18/01/2015 | Time: 09:00 h

Game #5 : Driveclub - Ignition DLC

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 20/01/2015 | Time: 05:00 h

Game #6 : Resident Evil 4

Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: PS2 | Beaten: 18/02/2015 | Time: 22:30 h

Game #7 : Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 22/02/2015 | Time: 19:30 h

Game #8 : The Order: 1886

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 24/02/2015 | Time: 09:20 h

Game #9 : The Order: 1886 (2nd playthrough)

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 10/03/2015 | Time: 07:30 h

Game #10 : Tearaway

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 12/03/2015 | Time: 05:30 h

Game #11 : Soldner-X 2: Final Prototype

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 28/03/2015 | Time: 01:00 h

Game #12 : Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 29/03/2015 | Time: 27:00 h

Game #13 : Bloodborne

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 24/04/2015 | Time: 33:20 h

Game #14 : Run Sackboy! Run!

Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 03/05/2015 | Time: 07:20 h

Game #15 : Soldner-X 2: Final Prototype - The Last Chapter

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 08/05/2015 | Time: 00:45 h

Game #16 : Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag - Freedom Cry

Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 10/05/2015 | Time: 05:10 h

Game #17 : Driveclub - Photo-Finish DLC

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 13/05/2015 | Time: 04:00 h

Game #18 : Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 18/05/2015 | Time: 10:00 h

Game #19 : South Park: The Stick of True

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: X360 | Beaten: 28/05/2015 | Time: 16:40 h

Game #20 : Alpha Protocol

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: X360 | Beaten: 07/06/2015 | Time: 18:45 h

Game #21 : Splinter Cell: Conviction

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: X360 | Beaten: 24/06/2015 | Time: 08:20 h

Game #22 : Steins;Gate

Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 10/07/2015 | Time: 47:07 h

Game #23 : Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones HD

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: 25/07/2015 | Time: 13:41 h

Game #24 : Flow

Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: 26/07/2015 | Time: 01:45 h

Game #25 : Journey

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: 31/07/2015 | Time: 02:00 h

Game #26 : Colony Wars

Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Platform: PS1 | Beaten: 04/08/2015 | Time: 02:06 h

Game #27 : Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 07/08/2015 | Time: 02:51 h

Game #28 : Colony Wars: Vengeance

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS1 | Beaten: 09/08/2015 | Time: 01:05 h

Game #29 : Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: 15/08/2015 | Time: 05:24 h

Game #30 : Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings

Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Platform: PS2 | Beaten: 23/08/2015 | Time: 07:40 h

Game #31 : God of War: Ascension

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: 30/08/2015 | Time: 13:22 h

Game #32 : Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: 09/10/2015 | Time: 55:50 h

Game #33 : Beyond: Two Souls

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: 13/10/2015 | Time: 09:50 h

Game #34 : Uncharted: Golden Abyss

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 20/10/2015 | Time: 10:11 h

Game #35 : Mirror's Edge

Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: 11/11/2015 | Time: 08:54 h

Game #36 : Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: 3DS | Beaten: 15/11/2015 | Time: 33:30 h

Game #37 : Little Big Planet 3

Rating: ★★★★☆ | Platform: PSV | Beaten: 27/11/2015 | Time: 10:12 h

Update after playing through the DS Castlevanias:

Game 15: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow - Finished (best ending)

I've played the GBA CV's but not the DS ones so I thought it was finally time. This is a balanced entry with nothing especially wrong (though fuck soul grinding, especially as you need a few for the best ending), but in that regard it also doesn't really go too far beyond the established Metroidvania formula, and ends up a bit derivative as a result, even it's very well executed, and I did like the more divergent weapon design/upgrading. It's good but it's mostly based on what's come before. It might be my favourite of the post Symphony of the Night games that strictly follows that style though.

Game 16: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin - Finished (best ending)

I like certain things about this game, like the callbacks to Bloodlines (which is the classic Castlevania I'm most familiar with), the varied locations and the team mechanics, and in general it tries to mix up the formula a bit. However, it also has some major failings, like how much recycled content there is (including having to redo early worlds but a little different later), and it feeling like the mechanics are buckling a bit under so many systems; there's so many things at this point it's resulted in something that basically impossible to balance, and while mostly easy it felt like some bosses were basically "balanced" by doing a ton of damage to you with little else extra (contrasted with Order of Ecclesia, where bosses hit like trucks but also frequently have interesting features to them). I did like how the best weapon was handled though, with it being your skill and knowledge that determines how soon you get to use it in the endgame, and it was satisfying to work out a strategy and get it before you were presumably "supposed" to get it. Also pushing a train was kind of awesome. Overall I consider it the weakest of the three DS Castlevania's but it certainly has it's moments and, comparing with the weakest of the GBA games, it's still far better than Harmony of Dissonance.

Game 17: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia - Finished (best ending)

This finally goes out it's way to completely mix up the established Metroidvania formula, and IMO it does a very good job. The early levels are much more linear than the other games, but it also gives the game a more deliberate pacing and the challenge curve and ability provision is more balanced because you can't go off in crazy directions. The way the damage types are done also gives motivation to do something other than just use your highest DPS weapon all the time, and the combinations allow for more variety in your approach on top of that (although it still ends up pretty broken by the end). The boss design is much improved too, and while the game is much tougher most of the bosses also felt fairer with patterns I knew I could conquer if I just learned a little more (as opposed to earlier games where it felt like you may as well just tank things a lot of the time), even the puzzle (like the infamous Crab) and joke bosses are much better. Overall the challenge boost is just what was needed, especially as it felt like it came with better general design as well. Also, finishing the first half of the game and While they still involve plenty of grinding even the sidequests felt toned down a lot, and I ended up doing all of them (though I got pretty lucky with the last couple of bullshit ones). Not just my favourite DS Castlevania but maybe my favourite game in the series; having played a game that's surpassed Symphony of the Night for me I can definitely say that the prior handheld games I've played don't.

4. The Flintstones: The Surprise at Dinosaur Peak

Click to expand...

Banjo-Kazooie
Duration played: 19:41:48

I'm kinda cheating with this one. I collected 98 jigsaws and 783 notes. I already had the feeling getting so much done required quite a lot dedication, but when after the fake credits I needed even more notes to take on the final battle... I don't want to collect them. I saw the 'credits'. I consider this game beaten.

The game itself was fun, but obviously old. Some of the mechanics (like being able to accidentally leave the world) and the camera were bad. Grunty's Furnace Fun was really weird as a final level. Enjoyable game, but it's crazy how many of those notes you have to collect. Saddens me actually. Cannot imagine how much effort this would've taken children back in the day. Still, interesting how each world has missions you have to solve. It was fun nonetheless.

(Original post with list of completed games.)

38:03h. Beat the Champion (Well duh). Setting-wise. Gen V is possibly the blandest of the series, and I'm not a fan of the Unova designs either. But Pokemon is like pizza - even when it's not the best, it's still good. I found the game quite a bit harder than Gen VI though - some gym leaders made me frown and I even had to grind a couple times.


Updated OP

CengizMan said:

Banjo-Kazooie
Duration played: 19:41:48

I'm kinda cheating with this one. I collected 98 jigsaws and 783 notes. I already had the feeling getting so much done required quite a lot dedication, but when after the fake credits I needed even more notes to take on the final battle... I don't want to collect them. I saw the 'credits'. I consider this game beaten.

The game itself was fun, but obviously old. Some of the mechanics (like being able to accidentally leave the world) and the camera were bad. Grunty's Furnace Fun was really weird as a final level. Enjoyable game, but it's crazy how many of those notes you have to collect. Saddens me actually. Cannot imagine how much effort this would've taken children back in the day. Still, interesting how each world has missions you have to solve. It was fun nonetheless.

(Original post with list of completed games.)

Click to expand...

I think it was even worse as a kid, if you played the XBL iteration. Did you play on N64? If not, in that original game IIRC you had to get all notes in one run of a level. I think I heard they changed that for the new releases, though. Just brutal. I'm pretty sure I never did 100% it. Click Clock Wood in particularly was ridiculously tough to find and keep all the notes in.

Game 15 - Final Fantasy III (Steam) - Started 6/6/14, finished 3/21/15 - 19:19

I didn't actually intend on beating this game this month but my buddy Bob has been doing a complete Final Fantasy playthrough and I've decided to join him for both 3 and 4. Over the last year, I'd played the first nine hours and in the last week, I polished off the last ten.

Verdict? It's very much a product of its time. Grinding is a necessity (especially for the final boss), the story is completely bare bones as is the characterization and the battle system has been improved upon in later games. The first half of the game in particular is a gigantic slog. But somewhere around the twelth hour, experience from monsters increased and my characters quickly became badasses which really improved the experience. It was worth playing just to see how the series evolved over time. And the Uematsu score is perfection, his finest early work.

Original post

5. The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy

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Game 5 - Code of Princess
3DS

A side-scrolling beat-em-up with some interesting ideas, but it ultimately fails to really achieve them. Each level is way too short with no real variety.

Game 6 - Monster Monpiece
PSV

Fantastic card battling game hampered by its fanservice. i would love to see its mechanics exported elsewhere free of the rubbing or generic story. Either way, I really enjoyed the game and actually prolonged the end of the story as long as I could.

Beat MM7 yesterday an it was the longest one yet!


Games Beaten: 21 / 52
Total Playtime: 90 hours, 14 minutes

01 - ??

Game 5: Rhythm Heaven Fever [Wii] — 6 hours, 46 minutes [Finished: March 21st]



Rhythm Heaven Fever was just as fun as my first exposure to the series through the DS version. It lacked the touch controls of its handheld predecessor, too, so that's a plus. Just like with the DS version, there are certain rhythm mini-games that I didn't enjoy as much as others (such as the fishing one, which was rather peculiar), but they were fun, overall. The remix levels once you finish a set of songs are still cool, and it's still as hard as ever to perfectly hit all of the notes in a level when required to for bonuses. This is a game that, despite having "finished" by completing all of the songs, I'll return to so that I can unlock new bonuses and try my hand at perfecting as many mini-games as possible. Hopefully the 3DS game turns out great, and I also hope it gets released in North America.

(original post)

Thought I should post an "official" update since I haven't done one since Jan 5th.....anyways here it goes.

P.S. I have Resident Evil Revelations 2 listed on here as 5 games, the reasoning behind this is I experienced the game on a per episode basis as they were released (I grouped the two "bonus" episodes as a single "game" because they came out on the same day and I experienced them back to back) instead of as a traditional retail/physical release.


2. After Burner II 3D (Finished 1/15/15, playtime 4 hrs 39 min) - I ended up getting this game because I had fond memories playing After Burner on the 32X, which if I remember correctly was actually After Burner 2. Well after beating the game's 22 mission (I don't count the 23rd mission cause all it is is launch & land on an aircraft carrier) I gotta say I can't help but feel a bit disappointed, mostly because it didn't play similar to the way I remember it playing, but hey sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.

3. Resident Evil Remastered HD (Finished 1/25/14, playtime 7hrs 2 mins+) - About 10 years ago I played & beat the original Gamecube version of this game, which I remember really really enjoying at the time. So naturally I decided to pick up the HD remaster for the PS3 and I gotta say I still really enjoy this game, so much so that I plan to do a few more playthroughs (my first playthrough was with Jill) to get the rest of the endings. I was also blown away at how well this HD version of the game looked and even noticed a few things (like Jill's bouncing breasts) that I didn't pick up (mostly because of the crappy CRT TV I had used to play the original game) when I first played the game way back when.

4. Resident Evil Revelations 2: Episode 1 - The Penal Colony (Finished 2/28/15 - 14 hrs) - was debating on whether to do this episodically (which is the way I am experiencing the game) or as a whole and after much internal debate I decided to go episodic because it's the main way I'm experiencing the game. Now if I had opted to buy the retail disc or get the Season Pass after all 4 (6 if you include the 2 bonus episodes) episodes were release then I would do it as a single game. With that said my feelings on Episode 1 of RE Revelations 2 are pretty positive and I thoroughly enjoyed the revamped Raid Mode having nearly gotten all the currently available Medallions (I only have approx 65 left to earn/get) so far.

5. Resident Evil Revelations 2: Episode 2 - Contemplation (Finished 3/8/15 - 15 hrs) - Really enjoyed playing this episode and loved the two end of scenario boss fights as well as the little cliffhanger at the end of Barry's scenario. Raid mode continues to be awesome despite the RE 6 love (all the new stages are from RE 6) and some of the missions (like Gauntlet IV, Very Hard, Mission 3) really ramping up the difficulty.

6. Resident Evil Revelations 2: Episode 3 - Judgement (Finished 3/12/15 - 10 + hrs) - I'm gonna be honest here, I was a bit disappointed by this episode overall as I experienced (more than usual) slowdown playing the episode, it didn't have much of a cliffhanger at the end, and the episode's big plot "twist" was spotted a mile away by eagle eyed players in Episode 2. One of the few things I did like about this episode was that it incorporated a lot more puzzles than the previous episodes and that the episode's "big" plot twist did tie into the previous Revelations game.

7. Resident Evil Revelations 2: Episode 4 - Metamorphosis (Finished 3/19/15 - 10 + hrs) - Overall this episode wasn't too bad and had a kick@$$ ending , though I was a bit disappointed by the short anti climatic way that Claire & Moira's scenario ended.

8. Resident Evil Revelations 2: The Struggle & Little Miss (Finished 3/20/15 - 2 hrs) - I still don't know how I feel exactly about these two bonus episodes overall, just that they aren't as good as the 4 other episodes. The Struggle was, well a struggle and Little Miss felt like a forced attempt at mimicking the stealth sections from the Metal Gear Solid series.

9. Chip n Dale's Rescue Rangers (Finished 3/21/15 - 2 hrs) - I first played this game about 23 years ago and it's been almost 20 since I last played it so I figured that going back to it would make for a nice change of pace. Funnily this game ended up being a whole lot easier than I remember it being and the more I played it the more I started remember of it, in fact now that I think about it this game may very well have been the first video game I ever beat.

Game #22: Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number: 8.5 hours

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I heard that some people didn't like this one because it was too much like the first one. Looking back I can sort of see it, but I don't really agree that it makes it a bad game. Hotline Miami 2 manages to up the ante on story, level design, soundtrack and variety of character powers. Mechanically little has changed, but it was so good to begin with that's okay. I guess it's from the Galaxy 2 school of sequels in that way.