Topic: Last Game You Beat

@Yousef- Since I have played almost all the necessary and well-known Rare games on the Xbox, I am deciding to play some of their Game Boy Color and Advance games on an emulator since those are not available to play and haven't gotten re-releases. Specifically, I am going to play Grunty's Revenge and Conker's Pocket Tales, as that last one is the only Conker game I have not played, and someone I talk to on Nintendo Life has recommended me to do so. It is interesting since that game was supposed to show what tone the Conker games and Bad Fur Day were initially going to go in before being reworked. However, I also have to play more of Diddy Kong Racing, and I still haven't touched Donkey Kong 64. I don't know if I'll finish DKR because of the controls on the emulator, so I'll be waiting for a possible NSO release with hopefully better controls. I have gotten to replay some of the Conker remake, but I'll do a second full playthrough when the game club gets onto it, but with the Game Pass price hikes, I don't know what'll happen to the game club. That game is what I am looking forward to seeing the club play, and was also one of my reasons for joining. I was planning on completing Nuts and Bolts this month, but I don't think I'll do it because I need to get more used to the gameplay shift.

@Pastellioli you know, I haven’t really looked into the remake now that I think about it. I know it exists, obviously, and had mild interest at the very least but I know so little that I forgot it’s available via backwards compatibility (and truth be told, the title made me think it was a spin-off). I have to satisfy my curiosity about it eventually.

@Yousef- It’s a pretty good remake even though it is a bit old. It’s separate from Rare Replay, and here where I am, I bought it from the Microsoft Store for the inexpensive price of $9.99. A lot of classic titles are pretty inexpensive to buy, so there might be a few I wanna get. The remake gets a lot of criticism for being more censored than the original, but it didn’t lessen my experience or enjoyment with it, plus the censoring is only heavy with the language. The controls are so much better, and I remember getting the remake a month after I finished Bad Fur Day.

Similarly, my brother thought the remake was a sequel! I wish it was, cuz after hearing a lot about the story and ideas they had for it, it makes me disappointed that it didn’t happen.

I beat prototype (the original) on xbox360 last month , & it was the worst game i’ve played in recent memory; hands down one of the worst games i’ve ever played in my damn life. the controls were atrocious , the combat and gameplay was barely, & i do mean barely passable , the difficulty spikes and dogwater pacing with a forgettable story and bland missions - it’s a terrible 4/10 game , even by 2009 standards.

frustrating as hell to play

Welp, sounds about right. Confusing as hell this even had a rivalry with inFamous in the first place. InFamous was actually fun.

I finished Hellblade 2 over the weekend and I really enjoyed it. I'll give it another run through with a guide to mop up the collectables and 100% it.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III

An interesting and somewhat recycled campaign, 8 hours and a half long, so not as short as some people say, with charismatic characters, great storytelling and trademark excellent gameplay, so not as bad as some people say! The campaign consists of 14 missions and ends abruptly on a cliffhanger. Rushed development is the reason. Multiplayer modes excel.

I am about to finish Octopath Traveller II, but I'm doing a complete playthrough, so it takes time. There is a huge amount of content here.

@crippyd It's a memorable experience.

@Banjo- happy you enjoyed it. I’m trying to go through all the cods.

@Yousef- The campaign is very enjoyable and with more variety than I expected. It has time travel, but the storytelling is solid. I was interested in the story the whole time.

At first, I was terrified when I realised I needed to download a Call of Duty "app", but it's excellent. It has access to the modern games and multiplayer modes and you can install and uninstall content. It reminds me of Halo The Master Chief Collection.

You need an Activision account, but it's basically adding an email address and the console blends it with your Xbox account. No big deal.

Should have replied to this thread yesterday, but I decided to replay Conker’s Bad Fur Day in full and completed it again yesterday. It’s a game I’ve already played and loved a LOT, but I hadn’t played the thing in full since last year, and I’d only play the game in short sessions, and while I did make a second save file, I never got far into it. I was motivated to revisit it again since Pure Xbox’s game club had finally voted on the game for this month, and I do think a bit more differently of the game now that I re-experienced it again.

I did write more of my thoughts in the game club thread, but I’ll just try to keep some of my thoughts on it here a bit more simplified. I absolutely love the cartooniness and cute art style that juxtaposes the violent and crude humor and material of the game, which adds a lot of subversion to it and I freaking love colorful art styles. I still love the charming but sometimes a-holey characters, the humor and movie parodies are stupid, funny and smart, and the storyline is so bizarre but it leads to a lot of memorability, at least for me. The voice acting is very impressive, and the fact that all of it was done by just three people with so much vocal range was amazing.

The music is also great. I remember having the audio on super low when I first played the game for some reason, and I had already listened to a few of the songs online, but hearing some of the songs I did miss make me very impressed since it’s an N64 game. The composer, Robin Beanland, does a great job with doing different song genres for any level or situation, and so many moods are captured in the songs. Some of the tracks are pretty cinematic too!

The gameplay is more simplified compared to other Rare platformers like Banjo-Kazooie, mostly thanks to a cool concept called context sensitivity, which means that the actions and items the player uses change depending on the situation, and there is a huge emphasis on using the B button. For example, in one situation, you might use the B button for a standard attack with a frying pan, while in another situation the B button will use a gun or throwing knifes instead.

Despite the simplified button controls being very convenient and nice, I find a lot of the stuff relating to the gameplay to be a bit poor. I don’t find it entirely bad, I know there are games that have worse gameplay, but it is a mixed bag compared to the first time I played it. I remember not minding a lot of the gameplay, but now I am realizing how it’s very hit or miss, meaning it can be well-designed and good at one point, but can also be poorly done or annoying. A few levels suffer from being full of random, difficult, or annoying objectives or having a bit too much repetition, and there are at least two levels that come into my mind with those two points. The worst aspect is maybe the gun and projectile gameplay, which most of the time, was mediocre and went back and forth with having and not having aiming reticles, and even with reticles at some points the aiming is still off. I think the aiming and gunplay only gets good in the second to last final level, which isn’t until later on in the game.

The camera was sometimes poor and unmoveable at times, which does make it hard to see when doing some tasks and getting around the place. It wasn’t as bad as I remember it being, but it most certainly isn’t the greatest.

The game’s biggest strengths is with its characters, humor, and writing, but its biggest weakness is having gameplay and level design that flip flops between being good or bad. It’s still my favorite, but I think it’s the non-gameplay related aspects that are done best.

Octopath Traveller II

Good:

• Every good thing from the first game is back, with different content.
• Simple stories, some better than others.
• Epic villains.
• Excellent soundtrack, except for repetitively annoying Wellgrove/Timberain. I need both games' soundtracks, anyway.
• Really beautiful and crisp graphics at 60fps.
• Excellent art work.
• Big, lively and interesting world.
• World and dungeons are fun to explore.
• The environment sound effects and the graphical detail.
• Flexible, rich and improved combat.
• Two battle speed options (unlike the first title).
• The fixed camera angles are perfect.
• The huge amount of quality content.
• The quality of life features, some of them new.
• Lots of literary words.
• Partitio.

Bad:

• Like in the first game, grating and unnatural female voices when selecting the English voices, some of them amateurishly recorded, makes some characters too irritating to play.
• Items can be difficult to track and that can be slightly annoying for completionists, although there are journals for side quests, useful icons on characters and a final achievement for all side quests.
• A few shortcomings. No shortcut to defend is a weird choice and pressing A to open doors seems redundant.
• Some WTF moments, like the five Eir's Apothecaries acting like total idiots when confronting a single weak evil one and how Castti wanders and rambles unprotected under poisonous rain.
• Some stories and voice actors (Ochette).
• Overdone flashy graphic effects during combat.

Two final lines:

I liked it more than the first game because of the gameplay improvements and I loved the first one. I got all the achievements and it took me 131 hours.

Score: 9/10

Conker's Bad Fur Day/Conker: Live & Reloaded

The most technically advanced Nintendo 64 game returned even better, with improved graphics, sound and gameplay, as the most advanced Xbox game. There has never been a high-quality video game with this level of cheekiness and crudeness and there will probably never be. It's even more refreshing today, when the level of hypocrisy is at the sky's level. Most of all, it's funny, witty and politically incorrect.

As a 3D platformer (but not just that), it still has some rough edges typical of the era and performance is worse than the Rare Replay version (not than the Nintendo 64 version), but it's actually quite innovative in lots of ways and plays dynamically, while referring to tons of films as parodies. The graphics, the cinematics, the music and the voice acting are all excellent, but what makes the game really special is the story, the in-your-face moments, the characters and the lines at the end of the last two chapters. There's gore too, because nothing in this game is mild, except Conker, paradoxically. He's just having a bad fur day and learning from it.

Play time: 12:21

Score: 9/10

@Banjo- I absolutely agree with all of your points and thoughts. A lot of your opinions are the same as mine. The film parodies were one of the best aspects of the humor, The Matrix one was such a good blend of goofy and cool! In fact, the game convinced me to see the movie it was spoofing. So cool. I love the bizarre story, and the ending absolutely stuck with me, especially the message. Its humor, writing and characters are its biggest strength, and its why I can't stop thinking about it! It's so hard to find games similar to it honestly.

@Pastellioli The first Matrix film is the best. After beating this version and reading about cancelled projects, I think that this game is begging for a sequel.

@Banjo- Late response, sorry!

I read a lot on the cancelled Conker sequel (like, a LOT) and it just made me so disappointed it never got a follow-up. I watched a video that went over the gameplay ideas and what makes the sequel's cancellation so disappointing is that the full storyline, complete with an opening and an ending, was finished, and they were apparently going to start development after getting the story and gameplay ideas done, but they never did thanks to Microsoft. I'd still love a modern sequel, but only if it is by a good game studio that knows how to make solid platformer games and has the game do what made Bad Fur Day so likable and memorable. The sequel's story sounded like it was going to be a bit more serious (at least from what I heard in the video I saw) but the story still sounded insane and crazy. I can't tell you how much more disappointed I got after I finished watching the video, I am super passionate about the game.

I ‘finished’ - although the game has definite repeat potential and I only got a quarter of the achievements - ‘This Bed We Made’.

It’s a point-and-click style game where you play a nosy hotel maid in Montreal in 1958. Whilst cleaning the rooms your curiosity uncovers a mystery. It’s an interesting game - sort of Alfred Hitchcock meets Ann Bannon, looks good for what was clearly a small team (the same names keep appearing in the credits so clearly multitasking) and I thought it well worth a go at the current discounted price.

@Old_Man_Harper I had never heard about it, but I just read another player posting "If you are not allergic to woke brainwashing, it may be worth."

@Banjo- Crikey! 😄

@Old_Man_Harper I want to play Kunitsu-Gani next, a new Capcom game that is also on Game Pass.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

Path of the Goddess belongs to a combination of genres: beat 'em up, real-time strategy and tower defence. It's inspired by classics, like Little King's Story, Okami and Pikmin. At the same time, it's brand new, deep and poorly explained to the player, so much that you'll likely enjoy "new game plus" quite more, thanks to your experience, unlocked upgrades and additional challenges. Path of the Goddess is challenging and, once you learn the ropes, it's satisfying and addictive, ultimately pure old-school quality. Technically, it runs smoothly and looks beautiful on Series X. The sound is all good, but I recommend setting the scarce voice acting to Japanese, because everything else is so Japanese. If you have a bit of patience and appreciate the purer gameplay of previous generations, you'll probably love Capcom's newest game.

9/10