|OT| The 2021 MetaCouncil's Addiction Log (track your finished games here!)

[Li Kao]

13 - Carrion - PC (Game Pass) - 05/08/21
A neat concept (which I'm pretty certain has been done before, can't remember the games, though) that maybe should have stayed in its idea form. There is not enough there to make a compelling game that doesn't overstay its welcome HARD. Basically...

First session - Oh, it's neat ! I fear it doesn't have enough meat to keep being interesting, though.
Second session - This is getting on my balls hard !
Third session - I finished it ? Well, that's a relief.

 

[Parsnip]

#22, BloodRayne: Betrayal.
It's not very good. It's kind of wild that they are re-releasing it.

 

[Li Kao]

14 - Kill It With Fire - PC - 06/08/21
At first I found it far less fun that I thought it would be watching PossiblyPudding stream. Then the diverse objectives for each mission brought some needed meaning, for lack of a better word, some sense of progression ? Not really. More like a reason to discover the levels. All things being relative, a little like Mario 64 stars.
Then I thought, maybe I should make my own fun, so to speak, just enjoy the game for what it is.
Then I 100%ed that shit because I'm dumb.

All in all, a good time, but quite limited. Interestingly enough, for all its flaws, the game probably has more meat than Carrion.

 

[bobnowhere]

34. Liberated (Steam) - Playable comic book where cells can be story or even action/puzzle platform sections. Draws heavily from dystopian movies to tell a tale that would not be out of place in today's world of fake news. ★★★★

35. CATch the Stars (Steam) - Pretty simple puzzle game in a similar vein to the more advanced Sinkr games. Pull the various threads in the right order to clear the level. A Cat goes on a journey to look at the stars ★★★

36. Death's Door (Steam) - Fantastic ARPG taking style notes liberally from Studio Ghibli. Great levels, story and design are matched to a great battle system maybe only let down by a movement system than can be a little haphazard. ★★★★ 1/2

37. Omno (PC Gamepass) - Beautiful little 3d platformer about discovering the world around you and it's various inhabitants. Fun puzzles. ★★★★

38. Cyberpunk (Steam) - Finally got around to finishing it. Unmatched in immersion, an amazing open world but felt empty at times as most of the content is simple checkbox stuff. Characters come and go, outside of the obvious one, and you never feel like you changed them. ★★★★

39. The Bunker (Steam) - Fun little FMV game where you are the last survivor alone inside a nuclear fall out bunker. Discover what happened and how to save yourself when it all goes wrong and your comfortable routine is interrupted. ★★★ 1/2

 

[hersheyfan]

Game No. 110 (8.7.2021)
The Ascent (XSX)

OK. First off, I want to make it clear that The Ascent is buggy as hell. It crashed around 6 times on me (not even on PC, on console). I havent gotten several achievements because the game's codex implementation is literally broken. Enemies sometimes hide within pieces of level geometry that you literally cant shoot through (while they can shoot you just fine), forcing you to beat a hasty retreat. After a hard crash, the game notably takes an age to start from the title screen while it presumably unfucks itself.

But at the same time, The Ascent is also fucking awesome. It boggles the mind that an indie team was able to produce this kind of work - the mindboggling sprawl of the game's world just feels like a real location you're visiting. It captures the cyberpunk vibe far, far better than any other game I've ever played, and it just beats you over the head with stunning vistas over and over again. The gunplay is super fun, if weighted a bit too much in favor of automatic weapons. The soundtrack is also ace!

Its not without faults: the upgrade system needs a lot of work, and the fast travel concept in general needs a rethink - I understand that the devs likely wanted to show off their best asset (the game world) by forcing you to walk more, but the subway stations are too spaced out (and the time saving taxi system being too expensive, on purpose) that there ends up being entirely too much time wasted walking from place to place. But I'll chalk it up to Neon Giant being indie devs, and these issues should be easy enough to rectify in a potential sequel (please make a sequel).

Link to main post

 

[Parsnip]

#23, Return of the Obra Dinn.

Played it again and it's still very good! Shocking, I know. It had been enough time that I had forgotten most of the details of how to solve each fate so it was relatively fresh too.

 

[hersheyfan]

Game 112: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PS4) , 31 hours 39 minutes (8/12/2021), Platinum

I finally finished a PlayStation game in 2021, huzzah! I apparently haven't played on any PS platform since November of last year, it took a while for my hands to readjust to the Dual Shock 4 lol.

On topic: 13 Sentinels is.... a lot. If the mere fact that its a hybrid visual novel/RTS wasn't loopy enough, the game's plot is so densely packed and circuitous that its a massive challenge just staying on top of it all. At some point it feels like Vanillaware is throwing unnecessary twists out there just to fuck with the reader, honestly... and most of the good curveballs are in the early/middle part of the game. Overall though, I still greatly enjoyed the narrative, and Aegis Rim manages to rein itself in by the end, tying things together fairly neatly.

The RTS portions are surprisingly pretty fun as well, though the wireframe UI wont be everyone's cup of tea.

All in all, Aegis Rim is easily the most polarizing of all Vanillaware's games. It's an incredible ride - for players who are receptive enough to appreciate it for what it is.

Link to main post

 

[TrishaKit]

I actually beat Fuga: Melodies of Steel earlier today!
A wonderfully delightful game developed by Cyberconnect2, and a great successor to Solatorobo. I'd argue its actually probably Cyberconnect2's best game from a purely gameplay standpoint. There's just so much to manage. You only get 20AP during Intermissions and even talking to other characters uses an AP, so you really gotta plan out what choices you make to handle what's to come during battles. Plus battles themselves encourage a lot of formation changes to accomodate the situation; different enemies have different weaknesses, and you need to account for enemy armor values as well (I've found the machine gunners are the most consistent at getting those pesky armor values down). I also really liked the story; its fairly simple and straightforward as far as war stories go, but there are a lot of nods to Solatorobo and Tail Concerto alongside some lore drops that make the game's world all the more interesting, a world that was already hugely fleshed out in Solatorobo itself. Plus the OST is just wonderful.

 

[Li Kao]

15 - Lovecraft Untold Stories [DROPPED] - PC - 22/08/21
That's it, I'm out of patience and even OCD can't force me to come back to it.
LUS is not really a rogue-like, nor a rogue-lite, unless a game just have to use a randomly generated map to be eligible. It's unfortunately not a good game either, I saw it as a mediocre game until I just couldn't stand it anymore (because it's shit, but it's longggg). Now granted, I'm Rage-Quitting, so maybe I'm biased. The game indeed becomes far too hard on the second character playthrough, imho.
But that's only part of the problem, the item diversity is inadequate. The AI is laughable, and I can't emphasize that aspect enough, nearly every encounter consists of dumb mobs just running toward you. RNG can fuck you hard and the dev didn't find a good balance to it. Sometimes there is no shop, suck it. Sometimes the entirety of a room chests are empty. Though luck. The game also made the stupid choice of blocking you from backtracking to the last level, so if you missed a vital object, well, go fuck yourself. And that's delivered in an obnoxious global lack of clarity, the dev had to put up a fucking FAQ about the game, for heaven's sake !

Now the universe, the lore, is unfortunately mediocre, too. You could say it's Lovecraft Fanservice galore. You could also say than the only thing the writers did was sucking Lovecraft dick. This is nothing but Mythos All-Star. While I appreciated some references (like the phone in a certain strange place), they do not make a good plot.

As the trailer for the sequel showed the same pathetic AI behavior, I think I'm good on that one too. Cool, two-drops combo.

 

[Parsnip]

#24, Lego City Undercover.

I don't think the open world really adds anything to these games. Just a big map full of boxes to check off. Still, it can be mindless fun every now and then, just gotta keep the games separated by at least 6 months or I'll burn out.

 

[Wok]

Games finished thanks to PC Game Pass with the help of xCloud:

• Guacamelee 2,
• Twelve Minutes,
• Myst,
• Call of the Sea.

Games finished thanks to PC Game Pass (vanilla):

• Katana Zero,
• Donut Country.

Games finished with the help of Geforce Now (RTX ON whenever possible):

• Witcher 3's Blood & Wine DLC,
• Yakuza 0,
• Cyberpunk 2077,
• Control.

 

[Parsnip]

Little update.

#25, Dex. It's fine, gets a bit up its own ass at the end.
#26, Psychonauts 2. It's everything I could have hoped for.
#27, Yoku's Island Express. Delightful.

 

[Li Kao]

16 - Control - PC - 16/09/21
Continuing my love / hate relationship with Remedy. It was, overall, exceedingly boring. The brutalist setting is cool but gets old fast, the gameplay is nothing unique and it's chock full of documents to find and read. Sometimes they can even be interesting...
On the bright side, I loved the last 2-3 missions. Unfortunate that there was a whole game to play before them.
And no, Sam, you are not a good writer, stop trying. Or at least don't try to be Meta again, it's fucking painful.
I mean, let's say it had its moments.

PS. I wonder what is it exactly but one thing I noticed while replaying Alan Wake and confirmed with Control, is how Remedy games are, for me obviously, full of cheap player deaths. I never talk about fairness in games, not a topic that interests me particularly, but Control definitely wasn't.
Special mention to the boss who digs lethal holes in the ground while his size incites the player to look up. What could go wrong ?

 

[Parsnip]

#28, Aquaria
#29, Heaven's Vault
#30, Simulacra 2

Both Simulacra 2 and Heaven's Vault has a lot of different paths and endings, but I don't think I'm interested in replaying either of them. Heaven's Vault especially moves very slowly even on NG+, Simulacra 2 opens up a fast mode if you want to explore alternate paths, but I already got the "good ending" so I think I'm good.

 

[Li Kao]

17 - Psychonauts 2 [100%] - PC - Game Pass - 25/09/21
...
...
What a ride !

The writing carries a good part of the game, they went ridiculously above and beyond what should be considered adequate for a 3d plate-former. Note that when I say adequate I'm not including most plate-formers, which have no writing. So it's just one (several in fact) step better than what would be an unusually well written one. It's stunning.
The first one was, what, I don't remember but the game says it was basically a

Spoiler

mad power hungry psychic stealing children brains to put them in an army of killer robots.

This one ? Oh boy, not even comparable. Let's say the writing team tackled the origin story of the protag. But as they were absolute madlads they also dug deeply about the Psychonauts, and made segments about death, old age, regrets, and I may forget some.

Graphics are totally serviceable and can sometime be surprisingly eye pleasing. The music is super impressive too. Not always pleasing because I'm not a music fan, but when you stop playing and take a step back, it's the same feeling as for the writing: why did you make something so good for an important project but not an AAA monster with delirious budget ?

Perfect ? Game of the year ? Hmm, I have difficulty saying it. It's both largely a GOTY, even a multi-year one for what it does, and a relatively mediocre game on other fronts. Combat is barely serviceable, it does the job, but don't expect anything from it. And the pacing is bad, while I can't say a bad thing about the cinematic content of this cinematic plate-former, it's VERY cinematic. It talks, a lot, sometimes you don't play as much as you watch a show (incredible, though !). And as expected because nothing is perfect, every levels don't hit the same quality.

I can totally get some people hating the game, it has big downsides in the gameplay department, but it achieves other things so well, I... yeah, it's a flawed masterpiece.

 

[bobnowhere]

Too lazy to write short reviews atm:

40. Titanfall 2 (Steam) - ★★★★★
41. Catch the Stars Japan - ★★★ 1/2
42. Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Ireland (Ubisoft+) ★★★★
43. Death Stranding (Steam) - ★★★★★
44. Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Paris (Ubisoft+) ★★
45. 100 Hidden Snails 2 (Steam) - ★★★
46. 100 Hidden Eternals (Steam) - ★★★★
47. 100 Hidden Cats (Steam) - ★★★

 

[Parsnip]

#31, Far Cry 3. Kind of expected more from the story for some reason. I feel like I heard a lot about it back in the day.
#32, AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake). It's pretty good overall, but has a few control things that just feel off. Though maybe they are the same in official Metroid games and I just don't remember. Maybe I need a refresher, they are not on any of my game sheets and my oldest is from 2014, so it's been at least that long since I played them for the first and only time.

 

[bobnowhere]

Still lazy:

48. Spider man Miles Morales (PS4) - ★★★★ 1/2
49. 100 Hidden Eternals (Steam) - ★★★
50. Pathfinder Wraith of the Righteous (steam) - ★★★★ 1/2
51. 100 Hidden Aliens (steam) - ★★★
52. 100 Hidden Cats 2 (steam) - ★★★
53. A Juggler's Tale (Steam) - ★★★★
54. 100 Hidden Mushrooms (Steam)- ★★★★
55. Wolfenstein II (Steam) - ★★★ 1/2
56. Far Cry 6 (Ubi+) - ★★★ 1/2

 

[Parsnip]

#33, The Goonies. It's kind of bad, and short.
#34, Super Metroid. Boss battles are kind of shit.
#35, Shadowrun. Combat's just not fun.
#36, Metroid: Zero Mission. I had forgotten all the stealth parts. Also Mother Brain boss still sucks.

 

[Li Kao]

DROPPED - Aragami - PC
Gameplay is solid enough, but everything else is subpar. Writing, character design, objectives, I felt very little reason to continue playing.

DROPPED - Octopath Traveler - PC - Game Pass
It comes down to the very apparent cut & past feel of the game. Very long, verbose, slow. It's not bad, there is a solid RPG in there, but this feels like a solid paragraph that the author pasted again and again and again and...

18 - AI: The Somnium Files [100%] - PC - 24/10/21
I loved Somnium, and yet I could have so many criticisms toward it. And yet, I loved it enough to finish every routes
Mmh, let's settle on a very interesting mystery and several excellent characters. A mystery whose conclusion felt a little underwhelming and ridiculously convoluted, leading me to think that, in this case at least, while you anxiously wait for the big finale, it's the journey that is the real strong point. The ending isn't bad, eh ! A glorious finale in the epilogue.
That being said, now that I talked about some strong and not so strong points, I would be remiss not to be a bitch in emphasizing how many of the little sub plot are dependent on the protagonist being the worst detective ever. It feels that other characters could tell him 'I don't want to talk about this' and he would answer 'well, ok'. But it would be unfair to the game to put against it an aspect that must be very common in mystery VN. And as I already said, the characters and journey were so good that all is forgiven.

 

[bobnowhere]

57. Immortals Fenyx Rising (Ubi+) - Fun but incredibly dense and repetitive. ★★★
58. Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remake? Reimagining? (PS4) - Not the greatest campaign but decent, sadly the game has been consumed by the Warzone microtransation beast and is so buggy and broken I wouldn't bother. ★★ 1/2
59. Uncharted 1 (PS4) - Still good, still pretty janky, still a mass murder simulator. ★★★ 1/2

 

[Li Kao]

UPDATE - Nier Replicant - Endings C, D & E - PC - 28/10/21
Awful side quests, limited budget, hilariously depressing. Route A is of no interest and Route C and D feels more like cut content from Route B than added one. Route E was surprisingly good for something done years after the fact.
I... don't know what to say about the game. It felt awful and interesting at the same time. I don't want to write a small novel about it right now so let's say it's a worthy creative journey contained in a bad game.

 

[TrishaKit]

I actually beat Fuga: Melodies of Steel earlier today!
A wonderfully delightful game developed by Cyberconnect2, and a great successor to Solatorobo. I'd argue its actually probably Cyberconnect2's best game from a purely gameplay standpoint. There's just so much to manage. You only get 20AP during Intermissions and even talking to other characters uses an AP, so you really gotta plan out what choices you make to handle what's to come during battles. Plus battles themselves encourage a lot of formation changes to accomodate the situation; different enemies have different weaknesses, and you need to account for enemy armor values as well (I've found the machine gunners are the most consistent at getting those pesky armor values down). I also really liked the story; its fairly simple and straightforward as far as war stories go, but there are a lot of nods to Solatorobo and Tail Concerto alongside some lore drops that make the game's world all the more interesting, a world that was already hugely fleshed out in Solatorobo itself. Plus the OST is just wonderful.

2. Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth By Sleep -A fragmentary passage

This was a curious one. Finally happy to be making it farther in the series storyline (I was waiting for a PC release to play 2.8), it was really surreal seeing these games with modern gen models and textures. I've been so used to the old PS2ish models that it was a bit offputting at first for me. That said, all the extra details on the environments, splash of water when you walk on puddles, reflections...The game is pretty. And magic feels sooooooo good to use in this game. It makes sense, what with Aqua specializing in magic and being level 50 at the start, but nonetheless seeing the wide range and sheer power of magic made this game the most fun KH game to use magic in by far. Utility wise it was always a mixed bag in the previous games. Not completely useless, but oftentimes, especially in II, Cure and Reflect magics were typically the most useful. Here, Blizzard, Thunder, and Fire all get their fair share of love. Effects are as great as ever too.
I still don't really dig Aqua's voice acting though; its understandable to a degree in this game because she's depressed and losing hope from being trapped alone in the Realm of Darkness for so long, but nonetheless she always even in OG BBS just sounds so...shrill and bored. She's a very lifeless character.
Weird to be able to say that Mickey is a massive dick in this game. Combat is pretty good, though the demon tower enemies are annoying since they kinda just toss you around in the air and don't really have knockback.
Not bad, pretty short and unsatisfying though.

 

[Theswweet]

Reserving, I swear I'll update this one more often this time!

...I guess I'll update this when I hit 52/52...

 

[Parsnip]

#37, Tales of Phantasia.
It's fine but there's just too much combat.

 

[bobnowhere]

60. Uncharted 2 (PS4) - a big improvement on 1. mechanics., story and setting wise. ★★★★ 1/2

61. Uncharted 3 (PS4) - See above ★★★★ 1/2

62. Guardians of the Galaxy (PS4) - Brilliant on almost every level, does get pretty easy though. Shame SE had no confidence in it. ★★★★★

 

[Parsnip]

#38, Metroid Fusion.
I really haven't enjoyed the boss battles in any Metroid game so far.

#39, Metroid Dread.
Pretty good game overall. Really liked the QoL features for a completionist like me, the map is excellent with every location having its own completion percentage and the white flashing for general area for a hidden items and such.
Though at first I thought that using analog stick to control Samus would be a pain in the ass, you get used to it relatively quickly. So it feels great to play and Samus is really nimble and moves fast. When you collect everything and need to traverse the map from one end to another and it looks like a long trip but then you book it and are there in 2 minutes, it's great.
Not really a big fan of the counter mechanic and barely used it during regular gameplay. EMMI quicktime event seems kind of stupid, the window for success is so small that it just feels unnecessarily punishing with an instant game over and every time you get caught it just sucks out all the momentum you had, because again, the game moves otherwise really fast and is a joy to play. Boss fights are still kind of crappy.

 

[「Echo」]

It's a bit late in the year for me to go and make a detailed post like I did in 2019, but looking back it was quite fun when i could do that. So when the new year turns over soon to 2022 I hope this thread continues with it's yearly iteration.

This year I gave almost entirely to FFXIV. Just catching up since the last time I played it was 2014ish, so I had a lot to do. This expansion I'm starting out on time and all caught up which should leave me some more time to play other things. And I've been whackin' away at some of my Switch backlog too... So yeah I'd love to track it all again here with you guys.

I remember in the 2019 one i even had a counter for my R6 Siege hours lol. That'll be fun again.

 

[bobnowhere]

63. Outriders (PC Gamepass) - Becomes a bit of a chore towards the end, so many enemies, so little interesting stuff to do. But decent enough. ★★★ ( I played this earlier but forgot to add it)

64. Sizable (Steam) - Fun little puzzle game where you change the size and move objects around an isometric lanscape to solve puzzles and rescue Turtles. ★★★★

65. Halo Infinite Campaign (PC Gamepass) - Feels like a step back in design compared to previous games. Takes the worst repetitive parts of open world games and doubles down. ★★ 1/2

 

[Li Kao]

UPDATE – Control – The Foundation – DLC #1 – PC – 25/10/21
UPDATE – Control – AWE – DLC #2 – PC – 26/10/21

19 - Marvel’s Avengers – PC – Game Pass – 10/11/21 (inc. 3 xpacs)
[Including Kate Bishop / Hawkeye / Black Panther DLC]
I'm conflicted. On one hand, maybe because I'm a comic book fan, it was a joy to play with the heroes I love. On the other hand, it didn't steal its reputation. The campaign is serviceable to very good, then it ends. And oh boy, let me tell you, when it ends the desire to play and overall enjoyment goes out too ! Something fierce.
The game has nowhere near the diversity required to make a service game. There is only so many times you can stomach playing on the same old map before looking for the point to it all. And you don't find it, the point. So you drop it like a hot potato, the game.

20 - Halo 1 – PC – Game Pass – 19/11/21
Jeez, it aged ! But that's not that surprising, what is surprising is how mediocre the remastered graphics are. To the point I played with them more to make a point I experienced them than because they are good. The old graphics still hold up, the new ones are a rush job (far better paint job on Halo 2 which I'm playing now).

21 - Metroid Dread – Emulation – 19/12/21
Good level design. Obnoxiously unreadable map. Extremely difficult overall, to the point of being frustrating and tiring.
Let me finish before taking my gamer card away, you bullies !
The bosses are quite hard and long and frustrating, BUT it is a wonderful thing how the game is made in a way that you will get better each time and be able to clear them in time. But unfortunately, EMMIs are trial and error fest and too many. They bog the thing down.
And the final boss... just no. Four fucking phases with no save point in between. Took me one good hour of attempts to master it. Like every other bosses, it is doable, but four phases. No. Thanks. Fuck you.
Very good game overall that I won't ever replay.
Oh and did I mention it ?

Spoiler

FOUR PHASES, GO FUCK YOUSELF

 

[Parsnip]

I imagine this is my last update for this year considering what I have on my plate, none of which are nearing completion.
Managed 41 games this year,
It's less than in 2020 but that's alright, a lot of backlog was tackled this year.

=========

#40, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
It's pretty good. Not revolutionary though, but has some neat ideas.
Some of the English voice acting though is .

Watched the DLC cutscenes on youtube since the content in the Champion DLC seems to be bunch of combat trials and 15 minutes of cutscenes.

#41, Super Mario Odyssey
Lots of fun was had. Really the only knock I have against it is the motion control extras. Shake your controller to do a spin throw and such. Nothing against them in principle, just that they didn't have alternative means to do all of that. Which is ridiculous considering there's plenty of unused buttons or buttons that are just duplicating actions.

 

[Stevey]

14 to beat from 2020 (Log here)

Beat 22 this year, can't see myself finishing anymore in the next 2 days.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Can't see myself finishing Shin Megami Tensei V now. Wasted too much of my time grinding when I didn't need to.

Finished 12 games this year, which is less than I thought. I kept a log of them here.

Only finished 1 game (Resident Evil 3 Remake) in 2020.

 

[bobnowhere]

66. The Gunk (PC Gamepass) - Fun enough, we'll call it a, puzzle platformer. Suck gunk out of the environment to bring back vitality and life. ★★★

67. 100 Hidden Birds (Steam) - Find 100 hidden x ★★★

68. 100 Hidden Rams (Steam) - Find 100 hidden x ★★★

69. 100 Hidden Mice (Steam) - Find 100 hidden x ★★★