Topic: Last Game You Beat

State of Decay 2. Beaten a Sherrif run and a trader run. Almost done the warlord run.

Mario Golf: Super Rush (Switch)

Gameplay:

• Standard Golf - The first of the main modes is this traditional take on the game. Play on any of the games 11 courses (up from the 6 the game launched with) with up to 4 players (human or CPU) with various other optional adjustments (intensity of wind speed, use of special shots, number of holes played, etc.). Easily the best part of the game IMO, as there's something chill about a generally normal round of golf with just enough arcade zaniness added in.
  
• Speed Golf - The highly advertised new mode for the game. Same course selection & adjustable rules as the former mode, however in this variant everyone tees off at the same time & you have to run to your ball after each shot, adding just a smidge of that trademark Mario platforming to the proceedings, with total shot count & time spent both contributing to your final score. Really didn't play it much (beyond what you have to in the story mode) as I think the idea kind of runs counter to the vibe of golf.
• Battle Golf - Another new mode (and one I haven't tried) which is essentially Speed Golf on steroids. Playable on two different arena themed courses (which aren't playable elsewhere), it seems to have the same general rules as Speed Golf, however you can go after any hole on the course at any time, with a hole being removed from play once someone completes it, so the name of the game is to complete more holes than your competitors.
• Target Golf - A game play mode where you have to aim for the highest score by aiming for one of three different targets (you change teeing position after each round, and there are sometimes things to mix things up, like special balls or a 4th bonus target). It has Regular, Forest, & Volcano layouts (each being more difficult than the last). It seems to have been added in an update sometime after launch.
  
• Golf Adventure - Probably the most substantial mode in the game, where you take your Mii on a journey from Rookie to Pro. Your adventure takes you through the six courses included at launch (each one has a cozy little hub world), where you can level up your Mii RPG style by completing rounds of golf (usually some variant of the "Speed" variety. Even the "Cross Country" golf that appears in one area never to be seen again which reviewers were confused by is clearly just training for "Battle Golf"), or by taking on optional target challenges in each area's training grounds (which could be quite brutal, IMO). There are even a few boss battles on display, which I actually quite enjoyed when they popped up. Kinda mixed on this one though, as I wasn't a huge fan of Speed Golf, which is what is mostly featured (I thought I was going to get a break in Wildweather Woods when one of the Toads said they don't play Speed Golf there due to it being so wet, but after the 3 hole practice round it was all Speed Golf anyway...).
  
  
  
  
• Otherwise there are a handful of Medals (achievements) to unlock (one for completing Golf Adventure, one for obtaining Birdie on every hole at least once, etc.), "Star" & "Super Star" club sets to unlock for each character by playing as them repeatedly (obtaining these is another Medal achievement), and of course most everything (aside from the story mode for obvious reasons) can be played online if you have NSO.

Audio/Visual:

• It's definitely a bit more of a B-grade game in this department (this ain't no Odyssey or MK8D), but still, it's clean cartoon styled graphics look generally nice. There is some texture pop in, but this is really only noticeable during wide panning overhead shots & I didn't really find it all that distracting.
• As I mentioned before there are 11 courses, two of which have "Amateur" & "Pro" variants, so arguably a total of 13 (plus the 2 Battle Golf arena courses, I guess), and these range from the relatively mundane (Beginner Course, Bonny Greens, Ridgerock Lake) to the Mario-rific (Bowser Highlands, New Donk City, All-Star Summit). My favorite has to be New Donk City as it's clear they just lifted it wholesale from Odyssey and puked a few greens all over the place (it clearly wasn't designed for golf, but that makes it all the more fun as it gets pretty creative with how you have to get the ball to it's destination, especially on it's "Pro" variant).
  
  
  
  
• Also, there are over 20 playable characters & while the generic baddies (Boo, Koopa Troopa, Chargin' Chuck, Ninji, etc.) don't get much of a glow up the series mains are dudded out in their finest golf attire, including Pauline (from the original Donkey Kong arcade game) after her reintroduction in Odyssey, which is pretty cute.
  
  

Conclusion:

• Again, it's a bit more of a B-grade offering, but I'm actually quite glad to have given it a shot. I wasn't a huge fan of Speed Golf, but the classic variant is still here & accounted for, and I enjoy that quite a bit.
  

I'm just rolling the credits on infinite now. I gotta say it was a great experience and I really enjoyed the story. I did go off randomly exploring a bunch but at the end when i was just following the story path it all really came together nicely. The gunplay was amazing and just having the options of how to attack was great. Definitely recommend folks play it if they haven't. Ascent is next for me, put it off far too long.

Finished Eiyuden chronicles and Cyberpunk 2077 main story. Eiyuden is a pretty relaxing side scrolling rpg game which is pretty relaxing mostly because it isn't challenging at all. It can be a bit to grindy if people don't like that. But I finished everything in like 15ish hours. Cyberpunk 2077 is eehm, I still don't really know how I feel about that. There are times when I loved it and there were times that I felt not playing anymore. So certainly not the banger I hoped it would be. Good thing is I didn't encounter any bugs so those parts are fixed. I don't know if I'm gonna sweep some side content that I missed but I doubt I will. Guess I just should start something new and maybe I'll do a bit more with a dlc

Just finished Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge on Series X. Great game and perfect to play in between AAA experiences. I didn't grow up with TMNT but I did watch the 2012 show on Nickelodeon quite a bit and enjoyed it a lot. So I did like Shredder's Revenge more than I otherwise would have, it was nice seeing all these characters again.

And most importantly, I didn't find it to be that challenging compared to other arcade beat 'em ups like Streets of Rage. I played through it on Normal and found it to be a fair challenge. There's always a good amount of health pickups throughout the levels and the amount of lives always reset after each level, so you'll always start out with at least three lives, which is plenty. So even if you find games like this challenging and therefore not up your alley, this one is milder in difficulty and you can even play it on Easy if you want. I highly recommend it.

Just finished Guardians of the Galaxy. What a fantastic game! I liked the GotG movies a lot but this game made me like the GotG franchise even more. That's the advantage of experiencing long stories through media such as TV shows and games; you get to spend more time with the characters and they start growing on you. I tend to not care about most Marvel characters because I've watched their stories through the MCU movies. Having now played this game for roughly 20 hours and experienced the backstories of the Guardians, I care about them a lot. I was also surprised to see so many interesting characters in the game in general. Moreover, the humour was on point and the constant chattering between the characters always kept the missions fun and interesting.

I'm also glad that the gameplay managed to stay interesting until the end. It felt very simplistic at the start but then you start pulling off all these different moves and attacks towards the end of the game. At that point each battle would become an exhilarating cluster of chaos and it was super fun. The different elemental attacks and abilities helped spice things up and the enemy variety was decent enough. Not to mention the huddle up all-out attack where you get to listen to a classic 80s song while going berserk on enemies.

Speaking of which, the soundtrack for this game was stellar. If you loved GTA Vice City because of its 80s soundtrack, then you're going to love GotG's soundtrack for the same reason. Listening to songs like Take On Me, Final Countdown, Never Gonna Give You Up and so on during battles made fighting so much more satisfying. There's just something about listening to songs like these during gameplay that enhances the experience a lot. It's the same reason why I loved Metal Gear Solid V when you e.g. fly in on a helicopter to a mission while listening to Take On Me. It's just so awesome. However, I do have to say that doing a huddle up attack against the final boss while listening to "Don't Worry, Be Happy" kinda killed the mood.

With that said, this was one of the best licensed superhero games I've played. The story was concise and the character development was so good. Furthermore, the gameplay was fun and it remained interesting until the end. On top of this, the music helped elevate the experience a lot. So overall, I loved this game and I'm glad I got to experience it.

@LtSarge I don't disagree with anything else as I loved the game as well, but I will say I found it funny to be listening to a song that felt so out of place during a big battle.

Has anyone played that Greedfall? I finished it at the weekend. I have unintentionally played some RPGs this year 😅

It was good though, I enjoyed it. I think my favourite companion was Petrus even though I initially thought I'd hate him. He had a great voice and other members of his faction were so much worse that I think it made him look like a saint 😅

Finished as dusk falls during the weekend and somehow managed pretty much the best ending. I loved this game (altough it does not have much gameplay ) including the artstyle. The story is compelling and the outcomes hard to antecipate. A plus is that I had to be outside on saturday morning but had access to good WiFi and it works like a charm on cloud! The only bad part is that one major storypoint is very poorly explained and the internet is still trying to figure out, not sure if the idea is for a sequel or DLC or just for the fun of having a cliffhanger (which I am not a fan in the slighthest)

@ralphdibny It's one of those games which was on my play later list , but didn't get around to play before it left. That's always the problem with having so much stuff to play and so few time. It's on Ps plus extra now (which i also have) so i might give it a go there. I've heard good stories about it.

@Balta666 That game was so amazing. Everyone that has gamepass and likes narrative games should try it. I think the art style, which is criticized by some, actually makes it feel like some sort of visual novel and i love that style for this game.
I know which story part you mean. When it ended i had one question mark about that specific part and immediately looked it up if i missed something or that a DLC was announced. But as you said everyone one the internet is as flabbergasted as we were about that specific story line. Who know if we get a Prequel or maybe DLC. I hope we do and its as good as the base game

@Lavalera I actually started it before it left game pass but when it became clear that I wasn't going to finish it in time, I moved on to mass effect and bought Greedfall for around £11 and then also it's DLC for like £3 or 4 on sale

Do you play a lot of these RPG style games? I can't say I do and I think I've found, playing them back to back, the easiest way for me to actually play these sorts of games is to explore everything that I can first and then move on to the story and sidequests. That way I can fast travel between places to keep the story moving. I know it probably sounds like heresy lol. The exploration part is tedious but when I get to the actual game, it makes it a bit easier. I feel like I'd bounce off the game quickly if every story mission took hours because I was exploring.

@ralphdibny I kinda do. Besides having played a lot of MMORPG on pc for years, my favorite type of game is basically a story driven action/adventure/RPG open world style of game. To be fair, there is no good way or bad way for it to be played, everyone has their own way to play a game. That for me is the whole charm of the open world style of action rpgs. I personally don't like to explore to much since that mostly opens up to many quests and sidestuff for me to do so i usually try to clean up what was already opened on the map and then do it part of the map at a time. That means that i switch between main and side quests all the time, but for me personally that isnt really a problem. I still remember most of the story playing it that way and still have a lot of variation in gameplay. But yeah if you prefer to first explore everything (which i think only will work in smaller games that have no fixed level zones) then thats a perfectly fine way to play. Imo these kind of games are kinda build to craft your own experience but in a semi linear way, since the story is usually fixed on the map.

@Lavalera fair enough, that's good to know! I kind of figured I may have been playing it atypically but probably more typical is my desire to do all sidequests before the main story.

Greedfall isn't proper open world, I have limited experience with comparable games but Greedfall is made up of lots of areas you can access from an on screen map.

I think the only thing I didn't like about both Greedfall and Mass Effect is the inventory management. Just really tedious to go through it, constantly trying to equip the best gear for yourself and every party member before selling the worse and boxing the stuff you can't wear yet. I can't remember if Mass Effect had some sort of penalty for having too much in your inventory or if I just kept it tidy for my own sanity. Greedfall stops the character from being able to run fast if the gear is too heavy so basically have to do some inventory juggling every few times you stop off in a "travel pause" between areas.

I guess these are both Western RPGs and they were quite different from the Yakuza games I played earlier in the year (both the back end of the original series and Like A Dragon which were different from eachother too). It's quite unlike me to play long RPGs but I feel like I've played a lot this year! 😅

@ralphdibny ah check didnt know Greedfall was more instanced zones than open world. That's also the more traditional rpg kind of world building before open world became a huge thing. I consider it more semi open world, since within zones you still usually have the freedom to move wherever you want.

The inventory management and weight limit are both things that have been in rpgs for ages and if you play the more traditional Western rpg games like Elder scrolls, Dragon age etc you will encounter that stuff more. The whole idea about rpgs is usually get strong enough to defeat evil boss x that wants to destroy the world. For that to happen you usually start out as a nobody and by gaining new gear and training you get stronger so you can defeat the boss. That's why you ways keep getting new gear and change your build to whatever suits your playstyle. The weight limit always sounded to me to be a keep it realistic thing. If you fight in the wild with a backpack on the heavier it is the harder it will be to fight. And since people use to play rpg to role play so pretend to be someone else they want some things to be more realistic.

As you said there is a clear difference between Western style rpgs, which tend to be more like dungeons and dragon type realistic, fantasy or magic medieval sim type of games, Japanese games are totally different. Yakuza games generally have few rpg elements but are more action adventure type than pure rpg, well except like a dragon of course. Like a dragon is a jrpg and one in the purest form. It kinda is the same as latest dragon quest game in all rpg element ways. Like different jobs, some grinding parts in between. But Lad also still is a yakuza game with its side stuff and all. Good thing is I like both those styles and differentiate between them a lot. Sometimes I go for a more action adventure packed title with fewer rpg elements like ac origins which im playing now and then I follow up with a jrpg or a western style rpg. But yeah most of those games are a time sink, just like the Yakuza games you can easily spend 100 hours in some (j) rpgs without seeing everything in the game, so it is something you got to have the dedication and motivation to play for

@Lavalera yeah that sounds about right. You can fast travel from camps but only discover new areas if you go to a travel market at certain points on the map. so I sort of sneaked around each area at first, hit X on each travel marker to see what areas I could travel to which meant I was allowed to fast travel there from camps and other travel markers. If that makes sense, it's a bit hard to explain😅

Yeah, I would have struggled to classify Yakuza 1-6 into any genre but RPG is the closest thing it fits. The only thing I can tell is different from a traditional RPG is the combat which is presented more like a 3D fighting game rather than RNG/dice roll based mechanics. And like a dragon does away with the combat for something more traditionally RPG so I think it hits home how much of an RPG the originals were.

I think before I started the Yakuza series in 2020 (I think?), The longest games I'd played were MGS Peace Walker and The Phantom Pain, both games I've played twice with at least 100 hours per playthrough on average and also Breath of the Wild which I probably sunk over a hundred hours into. It's not a habit I'm in to but all 3 of those games were so good that it was worth the time investment! I did about 100+ hours in Yakuza 0 too which was my first Yakuza game. I'm so glad that Kiwami 1&2 and Yakuza 3 were much shorter 😅

@ralphdibny @Lavalera Will have to check out Greedfall at some point. I have it through PS+.

I started and finished Escape Academy over the weekend. It's short at 3-6 hours but I loved every minute of it and really want more. Initially the cursor settings were a little too sensitive and I had to tweak them in the menu but after that it was smooth sailing.

I've played escape room games on phone. Things like The Room series (which is great) House of Da Vinci or Escape room:The game and while they all have some merits none of them actually feel like real Escape rooms. This does. It was designed by a team who actually creates and runs escape rooms in real life and it shows. A wide variety of puzzles all tied together with a simple but interesting enough plot.

I felt the puzzles and times given were perfectly balanced. Though your mileage may vary. It was rare I needed extra time to finish a puzzle but the time was always ticking which gave some good tension, and sometimes I cut it close and my blood was pumping. There's also supposed to be a pretty robust hints system, though I didn't really use it much, except by accident that was another small flaw. All you have to do is press X to get a hint and you can easily do that by accident. I felt this needed a confirmation prompt.

Considering how short and unique it is i'd highly recommend it to anyone interested. 8/10.

Yeah, might be better to hold off on ME3 so you don't feel like you are rushing it! Nice one on the XC3 arrival. I haven't played any of them but I do have the first one on 3DS and X on Wii U, just never got around to them! It's funny, I barely play any switch games handheld because I always feel like I am missing out by not playing them on the big tele. Not that I play the Switch a huge amount anyway but handheld time is mostly either dedicated to touch screen games/certain types of puzzle games or stuff where it's like filler content in a game rather than the main story.

I think I avoided RPGs for so long because of a brief and unenjoyable soiree with Final Fantasy 7 when I was a kid and my excuse for later life is that I literally have no time. Somehow I've managed to be ill and off work in order to finish Like a Dragon (can't remember what I was ill with, maybe it was the train strikes) and covid for Greedfall.

I played all the non remake Pokémon games from Blue up until Black when they came out for some reason though. I pretty much gave up on the series after playing X for a little while. I did get about half way through Let's Go Pikachu which I really need to go back and finish. I think I over complicated it by taking Pokémon out in the pokeball plus thing to level up and playing Pokémon Go at the same time. Whenever I get back to it, I'm Gona take my Growlithe out of the pokeball (poor boy has been stuck in there for almost 4 years now 😅) and completely forego the Pokémon Go aspect of it because it really bogged it down for me.

I've never done an Escape Room in real life so I have no idea what they are like really! My only knowledge of them comes from that episode of Not Going Out with Lee Mack 😅

@ralphdibny I have an external 15” 1080p USB-C monitor (basically the size of a large tablet) that I use for both second work screen and for Switch. It’s a game changer. Wasn’t too expensive either about £125. Like you not a huge fan of playing on the small, low res portable screen, at least for AAA.

Give Escape Academy a go, it’s on Game Pass and super short! (Unlike Xenoblade a lot of reviews mentioning 120-150+ hours) 😭

@themightyant yeah I heard good stories about that one. Might give it a go if I want to start a short game in between, which I should do more often. I finished As dusk falls last weekend in between playing ac Origins and it was a welcome change. So I'll add that one to my list

@ralphdibny Funny thing is back when I was younger I only played shooters and Rts games, I didn't like rpg games at all, let alone jrpg games. And see several years later I play mostly games with rpg elements and jrpg especially have become my favorite. As you say the downside is the time investment there aren't many short rpg out there, most are at least 40 hour plus and some even longer. Even Lost Judgment I spent 160 hours in and still don't have enough with it just to name a game. So yeah I understand you don't play that many normally