Games We Complete In 2023

[Skummy]

Finished Sea Of Stars with the true ending, and final post-game easter egg last night. It's a slow burner, but by the end I was absolutely hooked, just a gorgeous, heartfelt lovely game. 

[probablyoliver]

27 minutes ago, Skummy said:

Finished Sea Of Stars with the true ending, and final post-game easter egg last night. It's a slow burner, but by the end I was absolutely hooked, just a gorgeous, heartfelt lovely game. 

Now that there's been some time since I finished it I feel I can safely say Garl is one of the best JRPG characters of all time.

[stokeriño]

Finished Ghost Trick! Barely 10 hours long but just fantastic fun all the same. Shu Takumi just writes the best games.

[Ruki]

Spiritfarer... it was a pretty alright game, where the ending just wrecked me. 

[Captain Kirk]

On 01/11/2023 at 21:18, Ruki said:

Spiritfarer... it was a pretty alright game, where the ending just wrecked me. 

Had that for ages and still not played, I really need to start looking at my backlog rather than the next shiny new game.

[Ruki]

But shiny new games are nice too!

[Lint]

Killer Frequency.  But thats not saying much, it only took me about 5 hours to beat, but I didn't get the so called "Golden" ending where everyone* lives

*Well except for the one person, but from what I'm reading, its not possible for them to survive

[Ruki]

Finished up Thirsty Suitors on Gamepass. Not too long, about 10-12 hours I think? Not the best game, but the characters are enjoyable enough to carry it through to the end!

[Ruki]

Two games in two days! Completed Spiderman 2. Really great game, Sony is the best for blockbuster type games like this. I think the only thing I really have left to do is collect the Spider-Bots.

[Ruki]

Like A Dragon: Gaiden. Once again, another great (bite sized) entry for the series. The ending has me going from hyped to bawling my eyes out. 

Spoiler

His kids talking to the camera at his grave.... that's fucking mean, RGG. That's more than just tugging at your heart strings.

Kiryu deserves to see his babies (and grandbaby)!

 

[BuddyAwesome]

Finished up Assassin's Creed Mirage and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Can't say it's a full fledged callback to the old AC style but I did enjoy having to bank on stealth more. I think it was a bit too bare bones considering how much the series had given us in the last few installments, but the story definitely was great. 

[Kaney]

Finished Robocop Rogue City. Was actually pretty great!

It's by no means a triple A title but it's clearly made with a lot of love for the source material. The sounds, the weight of movement, ability to be a pure bulletsponge etc is all just spot on. Would not have expected a skill tree, branching dialogue choices and side quests involving solving murders, rescuing hostages and also ticketing illegally parked cars but here we are.

Highly recommend if you liked the (first) film.

[9 to 5]

1 hour ago, Kaney said:

Finished Robocop Rogue City. Was actually pretty great!

It's by no means a triple A title but it's clearly made with a lot of love for the source material. The sounds, the weight of movement, ability to be a pure bulletsponge etc is all just spot on. Would not have expected a skill tree, branching dialogue choices and side quests involving solving murders, rescuing hostages and also ticketing illegally parked cars but here we are.

Highly recommend if you liked the (first) film.

Only played a bit of it so far (Baldur's Gate 3 has all my spare time and my soul) but it is clearly done with alot of love for the lore and is a very different type of shooter.

[probablyoliver]

Yesterday I completed Demon's Souls, my first ever actual Souls game, having previously only played (and adored) Bloodborne and Elden Ring.

Good game, although definitely of its time, and held back by some really bizarre and opaque systems (opaque even for FromSoft), but lays the foundations for arguably one of the best developers going. I was overall disappointed by the bosses, with only 2/3 of them offering any serious challenge, the rest seemed overly reliant on gimmicks over difficulty, but the levels themselves were all mostly fantastic (with the exception of the poison swamp, obvs).

A friend of mine once said it's the best 7/10 game of all time, and I'm inclined to agree, because it's definitely hampered by its numerous drawbacks, but it sinks it's teeth in like only FromSoft can.

[stokeriño]

Woop.

Many thanks to the corner of the internet which just a few days ago put together a page literally to answer the question of "so, these 3 personas have only a single combination for fusion so you're probably struggling with them...", because fuck me I went round in circles for ages looking for those bastards. 😅

The final trophy I got? The "use 10 baton passes" trophy, because I'm not so incompetent that I'll let my people die 10 times unless I'm doing it on purpose.

[Nick Adams]

So this feels a little bit stupid - I finally completed Mass Effect: Legacy Edition after completing the original three months after Mass Effect 3 released. If I had actually completed the game at the pace that I completed the originals, I would have had it done this time last year. Of course, the major difference between now and then is the fact that I am a married parent of two young children now, with a full-time job; when ME3 originally released, I was single and working a part-time retail job.

Still, a little satisfying - except that my wife straight up told me that, because I forgot that the red pylon is the "Destroy" option, I had committed genocide. Plus side, I got to see the "breathing Shepherd" cut scene after the epilogue. Now to play some Switch games so that the kids can't prevent me from playing by taking over the screen where the console is based.

[Ruki]

Finished off Persona 5 Tactica as well! A little easy, but a good story!

[Skummy]

finished Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, at least the base game, none of the DLC. They changed the threshold for getting the "good" ending from rescuing 50 Mudokans to rescuing 150, so I absolutely didn't manage that. I'm still not very good at this game, but other than the final level and some of the DLC, I don't find it as frustrating as I used to in parts, as what you have to achieve is always pretty clear, and having infinite lives in which to do it was pretty revolutionary for PS1 but feels a lot more normal now. It's basically a puzzle game disguised as a platformer in a lot of places. The Boardroom level can still fuck off, though, couldn't do it without save spamming.

Also finished Call of Cthulu last night. It's fine. The intrigue kind of dries up halfway through, and when it gets into the "descent into madness" part of the story, there's some interesting setpieces but for the most part it doesn't have a lot of new material to offer in terms of plot development or mystery. And after all that, the ending is a bit of an anticlimax - of the several possible endings, I got one that probably wasn't the worst, but wasn't the best. Although there's not really a "good" ending, from what I understand. 

[Ruki]

Finished up Unpacking. What a cute little game that was! And surprisingly good storytelling with just unpacking boxes. 

[Bobfoc]

1 hour ago, Ruki said:

Finished up Unpacking. What a cute little game that was! And surprisingly good storytelling with just unpacking boxes. 

I think Unpacking is the kind of game that epitomises what I want most video game storytelling to be like. It shows without telling, letting the player learn about the backstory through actual gameplay. For all the effort put into making games into "emotional" Hollywood-esque blockbusters, the simpler approach usually does it far more effectively.

I'm saying that as a Metal Gear fan, so I'm aware of the hypocrisy. Somehow, that kind of ridiculously indulgent claptrap does it for me.