Topic: Last Game You Beat

After finishing starfield went back to Sea of stars* to get back to the final challenges and true ending. Fishing the chef is the hardest part of the game!?!? Is such a difficulty peak compared to the rest of the game. Can't say the same about the final boss thankfully.
Now is time to finish the replay of The Messenger that I paused to play Starfield.

Finished both main campaign and dlc of The Messenger on Xbox with 7/48 achievements left but that I don't feel like doing atm. This is still a blast and it will remain in my top 20 overall.

Now we move on to cyberpunk dlc

Have finished cyberpunk 2077 phantom liberty. It is good but not as groundbreaking as I see people calling it. I was already a fan of the base game (after patched and released for current gen hardware). However can't say I am huge fan of the new area, where you pass 90% of the time in the dlc and even less of a fan of the new alternative ending but it has some good set pieces for sure.

Now it is finally time to move on to Lies of Pi

Green Hell. Great game. Very difficult when you are new to the game, but once you get used to it, it can be VERY fun!

Starfield

Gears 5

I beat RE8. It's up there with RE4 as my favorite in the series. The only 2 main games I haven't beaten or played are CV and 7. I doubt I'll ever get to either of them to be honest. CV seems to outdated, and 7 sounds too terrifying for me lol. Now on xbox, I'll probably just play cocoon and forza Motorsport as I'll mostly be tied up with sonic and Mario on switch for the coming weeks.

@NintendoByNature I am still on the fence for Sonic... On one hand I was a Sonic diehard when I was a kid but I strongly dislike all 3d entries. I particularly do not like the artstyle but that is not a biggie by any means but I am worried the gameplay is not 100% live classic 2d sonic as for example I turned off Generations after 15min as it was literally unplayable to my sonic standard's.

@Balta666 you and me both my man. I got sonic 2 and a genesis for Xmas when I was 7 or 8. I equally loved mario and sonic, but my mario love has stayed while after knuckles, my Fandom died. This is the first sonic game I'm actually excited for. I love the art style, and it reviewed well on switch, so I'm excited. I'll let you know how it.

I finished Alan Wake 2 last night. My thoughts on the game are up and down for the most part. There were definitely more highs than lows, but some of those lows kinda bummed me out. And they were in the last 3-4 hrs of the game. It felt like a lot of filler and padding towards the end there.

At one point, I thought I beat the game, but it turns out it was just a set up for another loop that lasted a couple of hours. Doing things I've felt like I've done a dozen times in the same places, mind place investigating, etc. If it had ended when I thought it did originally, it would've been perfectly paced, and ended on the perfect note. It just felt like it was dragging at the end there.

It might sound like I'm just ragging on it, but I really did like it. The combat was great, the lakeside setting was great( didn't enjoy the NYC setting as much), visuals, sound, effects, characters, and story were all 10/10 for me. And it genuinely scared me a bunch of times which doesn't happen in RE games as much.

This is one I highly recommend, but just know the end part is a bit of a slog. At least it was to me. I'd still say it's a great 8/10 experience. Some are saying it's GOTY, and while i can definitely respect that, i still give my vote to TotK. I feel like my score would've gone up if it ended where I thought it was going to. I might've scored it a 9 or 10/10. Fun time.

I have been into the Double Fine documentaries and decided to replay Broken Age which if I remember correctly I have only played act I in 2014 so before the rest of the game was completed. It is a really good point and click in terms of arstyle, characters and dialogue and puzzles to an extent (the ending is as obtuse as it normal in the genre)

The Smurfs: Mission Vileaf

+
Some of the most beautiful graphics in a 60fps game, especially in the first half of the game. Seriously.
Excellent soundtrack.
The sound effects.
The animation.
The voice acting.
Funny and family-friendly.
Challenging platforming and addictive puzzle mechanics.
Great controls and powers.
Decently smart camera.
Automatic checkpoints.
Decent combat variety.
Optimised for Series S|X.

-
No map.
No bosses.
Artistic slowdown when collecting items ruins the flow.
No marker for the only not obvious destination (first teleport).
A little short - but sweet.

9/10

Sequel The Smurfs 2 : The Prisoner of the Green Stone launched this month so another one to play soon.

Spider-man 2. same as it’s predecessor but improved with what you’d expect from a sequel & weighed down by the same flaws as the first game to

spider-man 1/2 are both 8/10 games

Alan Wake remastered. So I had a very good time with the game so I can very much recommend the game anyone who is looking for something interesting to play. It also exceeded my already quite high expectations. Alan Wake actually reminded me very much about the earlier Silent Hill games (which is a very good thing).

@oliverp I have the two backwards compatible Alan Wake games in my backlog. Have you tried the Project Zero/Fatal Frame games? I'm a big fan of them. I couldn't resist mentioning them because of the Silent Hill mention. Off-topic: Pikmin 4 is the next Nintendo game I'm buying, I loved the first three but my favourite is 1.

@nomither6 Yep, to me is like watching okay films, much like most PS exclusives.

Assassins Creed 2 - my first time playing it as well and I enjoyed it.

@Banjo- Oh thanks for the suggestion I will keep the Project Zero games in mind (I have thinking about playing them sometimes but not got around to it so far). .

I finished up both Spider-Man 2 & Super Mario Bros. Wonder last weekend.

I thought the story in SM2 was perhaps a bit weaker than the first one, but they managed to build on the already fantastic gameplay in meaningful ways (gliding in regards to traversal, web line in regards to stealth, new venom strike & symbiote moves in combat). Really fun time.

As for Wonder, it's just one of those games that gives you that childlike sense of wonder (pun intended) that reminds you why you fell in love with gaming in the first place. It's endlessly creative, shakes up the 2D Mario formula in ways I appreciated, and the post game world has some great platforming challenges (like usual, I wasn't able to beat the final post game gauntlet level though). Could have maybe used a bit more boss variety, but other than that I found it pretty much faultless.

Congrats to the both of them snagging TGA nominations, though I'm not sure what I want to win (alongside these two, I was also a big fan of TotK & FFXVI this year, though the latter didn't make the shortlist for the big award).

Finished up Valkyrie Elysium yesterday. It's a bit brief by RPG standards (I finished it in just about 20 hours, & I believe even managed to get the best ending), but that wasn't a big deal because there's not much story to it (most world building & background lore is relegated to environmental pickups called Hollow Blossoms & Verdant Blossoms which give you notes about the state of the world, and the latter particularly are important for getting the best ending. Also, you learn most of the deeper aspects about your party members by completing each of their own side quest lines, though I don't think these effect ending outcome).

Combat is really quite fun & snappy (you can lock on & zip to enemies from quite a distance away), and there's a lot of different ways to get the edge on your enemies (each enemy type is weak to one of the ten or so different weapons you collect, and each also has one of 5 elemental weaknesses, which you can take advantage of with magic attacks. Also, each of your party members has an elemental affinity & summoning them to fight by your side will coat your weapon with their element & amp the effectiveness of your magic attacks of the same type), with bosses usually having different points you can attack & dismember from them. That said, at least on Normal I was able to get by easily enough just by taking advantage of element weaknesses (I usually only took the time to take weapon weakness into account as well during boss fights).

It has a few small issues, like the fact that it doesn't feel buttery smooth 100% of the time (this is a very mid budget cross gen title, so the PS5 shouldn't have any issue at all), but the drops weren't as noticable as they were in Star Ocean: the Divine Force (which I also really enjoyed, BTW), so not a big issue. Also, you can only have so many weapons, magic, items, etc. equipped to their various quick access slots, so in the latter parts of the game I often had to pause at the start of nearly every single combat encounter in order to reassign slots (usually magic, since there are only 4 quick access slots, but 5 element types + healing magic, the latter you'll want to have equipped to a slot at all times since use of healing items negatively affects your mission completion grade if that matters to you. Grades don't effect which endings you have access to though, so it's not a big deal if you don't grade well).

Also not really an issue, but I get the feeling that a 5th party member was planned but cut at some point. There are enemies that are weak to Darkness, and while you do have access to Dark magic to counter them, there is no Dark element party member you can team up with to get the boosts you can get with the other element types. Plus, none of the bosses are weak to Darkness, even though there are a few that aesthetically/thematically SHOULD be (they're usually weak to something random like Lightning, or even weirdly enough Light, which is thematically their own element).

Anyways I picked it up during the PS Store's Black Friday sale for $30 (it also came with a free copy of one of the older Valkyrie Profile games, which I'm not sure if I'll play), and am glad I gave it a go.

I just beat Persona 5 Tactica on GP. For the most part, i really loved this game. I thought the gameplay loop was addicting as most games in this genre usually are for me.

However, you are constantly bogged down with conversations that can sometime take up 60% of your gameplay sessions.

I get this is a persona spin-off, but more often than not, I'm sitting there reading text rather than playing on the maps. It left me skipping most of the dialogue throughout the 2nd half of the game. The first half of the story was great, I just got tired of waiting to jump into battle.

And since I felt as though the game was dragging on, the last 3 battles I just played on safe mode since I was ready for it to be Over. The rest of the game was played on normal which felt just right in terms of difficulty.

But, the last kingdom had you revisiting bosses that were sometimes a slog to get through. With that said, I was simply winded and just wanted the game to be done with.

I really liked it overall, and its still a recommendation for anyone who likes the genre. Just note there's a truck load of dialogue that can be tiresome.