GAMES BEATEN BY THE AJSA (2020)

[Legolas_Katarn 1,817]

Let other AJSA members know what games you have finished this year. Post a few words about what you thought of the game, a longer review, a video review or footage, screenshots, etc. Feel free to discuss the games we've beaten or to talk to others about them. For a game to be considered beaten either finish the single player portion of the game or, for games without campaigns (MMOs, sports games, multiplayer only games, etc), play to a point where you have seen what the game has to offer. Not going to be counting DLCs as individual games (as that could get confusing) but feel free to post your thoughts on them as that is also the point of the thread. If it is an expansion that was sold separately or stand alone content like Shogun 2's Fall of the Samurai I will count that. Episodic games will count as one game, not a game per episode, but feel free to mention each one if you want to discuss each episode individually.

 

If you want to see what people thought of a certain game or see how many people have played it you can use the search function near the top right of the page and type in the game's title, just switch the search option to be for this topic.

 

I'll keep track of how many games we each have finished to see who has been playing the most and what our combined total is for the year.

 

Total Games Completed: 19

 

Games Completed By Member

 

Kaz32: 11

Legolas_Katarn: 8

 

Old Threads

Late 2015 (Completed 225)

2016 (Completed 626)

2017 (Completed 371)

2018 (Completed 302)

2019 (Completed 251)

[Kaz32 1,216]

2020 has begun. Let's beat those games like we always do! Hopefully this year we'll beat so many great games, that bad games will become a thing of last decade.

 

 

 

Oh who are we kidding, we're still gonna play bad games even if it's by accident or curiosity, but I sincerely hope that they will be bad in a "so bad it's enjoyable" way rather than "so bad they make you hate yourself for playing the damn thing". 

 

I got a bunch of free games from the Epic Games Store 12 days giveaway + discounts, so I'm expecting to beat those this month, and thankfully they're all great games so I won't have to worry about hating em!  

1) Ape Out

Platform: PC

You know what, I think this game should be called Ape Escape, because that's what this game is about. Not this Ape Escape series where you catch monkeys, 

The should've called that series "Ape Catch Fever" because that's what it totally is!

 

Ahem anyway, Ape Out is that Hotline Miami esque gorilla game where you escape from a cage, and then splattering people who are just doing their job to capture/ kill you since you pretty much just murdered their friends. You get to play 5 "record discs" that represents the stages, each one starts you on different locations. The first is a facility, second is a 30 floor building, third is a warzone, fourth is a boat, which you escape from & then you ended up going to a zoo, and the last one is a bonus stage where you rescue your son/daughter from a facility. I don't know if the first 4 stages are in linear story progression which makes you one unlucky ape, or they're just different scenarios. Either way, all you do is kill your captors while navigating through randomized mazes & escape, while listening to improv percussion instruments playing in the background. It's really fun, and it's not until the ending of the fourth stage will you actually hear actual music playing, which is actually quite funky.

 

It's apparently a modified version of a song called You've Got To Have Freedom by Pharoah Sanders. Neat!

 

 

2) Redeemer

Platform: PC

A top down beat em up game where you play as a former Russian soldier who decided to become a monk, and then years later his old boss destroyed his temple so you kill a bunch of people who wrecked it. It's good old beat em up fun, but it has a leveling up element where the more you use your first, kicks or weapons, the better they become & you can unlock various perks that make them better. I don't know why but the second part of this game in a lab with monsters is WAYYY harder than the rest of the game which are far easier since that part has monsters that can't be killed with your bare hands & you have to use weapons, but the rest of the game afterward doesn't have those kinds of enemy types. Either way, still fun to play & I got to maul enemies with various tools of death along the way. I wish that the game has an adrenaline meter that gives you temporary power boosts though because it definitely fits in the game.

 

3) From Next Door

Platform: PC

A neat RPG Maker game that I found out of nowhere that can be found here. 

https://spacezeta.itch.io/from-next-door

It's about a girl that moved into a new house that she got for..... a suspiciously low price. Then you know, creepy stuff happened. Apparently this game was made on a 2016 Pixel Horror Jam event, and it's pretty well done. It has a couple of endings too, but too bad the best ending is earned by running away from the house instead of confronting the creepy stuff in the house, though I would do the same thing if I was her, except I would buy a different house & do my research to what happened in the place first!

 

[Legolas_Katarn 1,817]

Completed: Killing Time at Lightspeed
Platform: PC

A visual novel style game where you are taking a roughly 20 year trip to a space colony that only seems like a 30 minute trip for you. While you are traveling you keep up with news and old friends by checking on and replying to messages and posts on the current popular social media site, every time you refresh the main page over a year of time for everyone else has gone by. A good short game showing brief snippets of the lives of a small group of people as they deal with a frequently shifting tech and political climate.

 

Completed: 60 Parsecs!
Platform: PC

Gather your crew and resources in 60 seconds before your ship explodes and try to find a new home after landing your escape pod. Manage resources, craft, and try to make helpful decisions every day with your captain stats, crew stats, and items. Amusing events and nice art style. Can start to get a bit repetitive as you end up doing similar actions or try to get the resources or items you need from random events.

 

Completed: A City Sleeps
Platform: PC

A horizontal SHMUP from Harmonix. Only three levels and limited tracks but each level has six difficulties with each giving different unlocks. Ghosts to equip that can posses two kinds of objects for different effects and relics for different passive abilities. What music there is is nice, decent amount of unlocks to change things up, and some story notes attached to each level and difficulty. The actual gameplay just isn't very good, going through the same looking three levels, dull looking shot, sword, and special attacks and enemies.

Completed: Fly O'Clock
Platform: PC

Jump between corners of a watch to avoid being crushed by clock hands. More playtime unlocks additional characters to use. Amusing for a little while.

Completed: DEADBOLT
Platform: PC

A 2D action/stealth game similar in style to Gunpoint but allows you to take a more action orientated approach. Shoot, use melee, or sneak your way through killing all enemies or reach the objective in each stage. Good atmosphere and music, a variety of enemy and weapon types, a hard mode that changes up the stages quite a bit, and community made workshop levels giving you even more options when the main game is done.

 

[Kaz32 1,216]

4) Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition

Platform: PC

I recently watched this old funny movie I used to watch when I was younger called Security Unlimited.

 

Cause it takes place in Hong Kong, I suddenly want to finish Sleeping Dogs. Still fun to play, and the definitive edition has every DLC from the normal edition, with the costumes being unlocked by buying them from the market, each of them more expensive than the rest. It even has costumes that makes you Sun Wukong & one of these brassmen monks.

 

5) Cat Quest

Platform: PC

A surprisingly awesome action adventure game where you're a cat that got his sister kidnapped, and then the whole game is you leveling up so that you completed every single quest you can find & complete many dungeons, while also unlocking item chests along the way to get lots of cool gears. The way you play the game is quite cool in that you play on a world map.

There's no HP or MP potions to use, but instead, you use spells/ rest on a town to heal & beat the hell out of enemies to restore your MP. It's quite annoying that the items you get from chests are all random and there's no fast travel mechanic, but luckily for me, I always get upgrades for my current gear so I don't have to swap with other gears often, and you actually get 2 really cool travel upgrades that make you fast as hell as you get really far into the game. There are gold chests that require a key to unlock, and I thought I had to collect them from a dungeon somewhere. But it turns out nope! All you need to unlock them is to complete 1 quest, and then you get the gold key that unlocks every single gold chests you passed on before. It's quite funny how the most powerful weapon in the game is actually your bare fist, ahem I mean "willpower".

I beat the game after completing almost every single sidequest except 1 that's so high up that it'll take me hours of grinding, but that's actually just extra DLC content & I completed all the main game quests. It's pretty weird that the game doesn't have an end credits after you finish the game, instead you just complete the main quest, quest completed, and then you go on to explore the open world some more with unlocked new game +. 

 

6) KIDS

Platform: PC

It's the next game from the creators of the drug trip PG (sort of) Human Centipede Plug & Play............................... Thankfully it doesn't have images that will scar you for life like that other game, but STILL. WHAT DRUGS WERE THESE GUYS ON WHEN THEY MADE THIS????

 

7) Resident Evil/ Biohazard 6

Platform: PC

I actually beat this game so many times back in 2013 - 2014 that I almost got all of the skills in the game purchased & unlocked. Now I decided that "you know what, I'm gonna reset my entire progress because I want to play this game all over again", so I reset my entire progress from square 1, and then beat this game all over again. And I STILL LOVE THIS GAME! Which officially makes this the RE game that I played the most, way more than the recent RE games. RE7, played that game 4 times. RE 2 Remake, 3 times. 4, 10 times + mods. 5, 10 times + mods. Revelations 2? 2 times. 6? This progress reset is probably my 13th time playing this game. The combat is so damn good!!! 

 

Maybe I should complete the first RE Revelations on my 3DS one of these days, but urgh. I can't stand looking at that damn carrot top Conan o Brien looking guy.

URGHH, GET AWAY FROM ME REJECT SHOP CARROT TOP!

 

8) Leaden Sky

Platform: PC

I found this game after searching for random games I can play on Google. Remember those good old days when the internet is so freaking slow & Newgrounds + flash games was a thing, and you have to wait 2 hours just to play a flash game because the speed is 1 KB per second? This game reminds me of an old flash game called Madness Interactive

 

Only it's a more traditional 2D side scroller shooter, with SO. MUCH. GORE.

 

At the moment the game lets you complete a level, and then brings you to an endless level where you just shoot as many enemies as possible while traveling to the right. There's also a testing chamber level to let you test out the gore system for your various weapons. I'm interested to see what will become of this game after even more levels are added. 

 

9) Renegade Ops

Platform: PC

I hadn't touched this game since 2011. That's because I played Skyrim & forgot about this game. Well not anymore! Time to finish what I started!

 

This is Avalanche Studio's less known game besides Just Cause & Mad Max. It's a twin stick vehicle destruction game which definitely takes notes from the A Team/ GI Joe in that you play as a vigilante road rashing gun nut group trying to stop an evil guy called Inferno, who apparenltly is immortal cause everytime you shoot him down, he always comes back alive. You can play as one of 7 people, each with their own special moves you can use, one of them surprisingly being Gordon Freeman. I personally like this guy called Blazemo because his special attack is a flame tornado that protects you from harm & damage nearby enemies. You play & level up the characters while also unlocking their perks to use. As you destroy enemies, you earn points that can help you level up & get high scores, though for some reason, 50% of the stuff you destroy doesn't give you points, even though they're mostly things that belongs to the enemy which is pretty weird. That's like having a destructible building in a game where you get points from destroying buildings, and then for some reason some buildings just don't give you points. Why?? Just give me those sweet points!!

 

Aside from that, the whole game is a simple fun chaotic made great by Avalanche Studios' well known Just Cause destruction engine, and it's awesome!

[Legolas_Katarn 1,817]

Completed: Yesterday
Platform: PC

Adventure game. You are an immortal that forgets his past when he dies and begins to remember what happened in the last few years that got him involved with his current "friends". Short, abrupt end, surprisingly violent, not that good, some nice backgrounds.

Completed: Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Platform: PC

The worst in a trilogy of games that was fairly mediocre to begin with. Continues to do nothing for Lara as a character, mostly just continues to put her back where she was before. The majority of the game has almost no combat and is entirely focused on simplistic puzzles and climbing. This makes her, once a game, murderous rampage welcome D action movie entertainment. The series continues to be bad or just average at everything it does, never providing interesting combat locations or weapons, continuing to have awkward melee combat and dodges, the guns continue to feel weak to shoot even with the low health most enemies have, your stealth kills are the same slow and awkward looking attacks she has been doing since the first game and her refusal to properly move and hide the bodies when you are in cover is a weird choice, and you are pretty much invincible in what little combat there is if you just make use of the herbs you gather all the time. Hilariously bad chase sequences where dozens of people/vehicles will fire machine guns, rifles, arrows at you and somehow not hit you as you slowly climb walls or you outrun massive catastrophes with the entire city falling and ground giving way all around you. Series is still very into Lara's constant pain. Upgrade tree and buy weapons to regain the same abilities you have been using all trilogy. A forgettable story that once again has Lara showing up in an ancient hidden culture and becoming the most important figure for two groups of people.

 

[Kaz32 1,216]

10) Table Top Racing: World Tour

Platform: PC

This is one of Steam's version of Mario Kart, except this one has a Micro Machines theme: play as a miniature car on top of a table & race through either fancy lunch table with various dishes, some table owned by mechanics & a table with a bunch of tabletop games. You get 3 car classes & 2 championships for each with a bunch of different race missions you had to do first before entering the championship itself. The first 2 classes are fun & gives you the right challenges without it being too easy. The third one? FUCK THAT SHIT.

 

Now to be fair all you have to do to progress to the championship is to just place at least 3rd in every missions, but me, ohoho, I want to get first in ALL of them. So that's why I replayed the races on the 3rd class championship OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN until my thumb hurts. The worst part of them all is the drifting challenge where you have to earn the required totals, and I replayed 2 missions 70+ times total. Then after replaying that much, I saw a youtube video of someone doing the challenge & got 1 million points like nothing......

JEESUZ. This is one of the extreme optional challenge btw, the ones I did requires 200,000 & 185,000 points, but the tracks are complete horse shit because one track is on a table with lots of curves & pits, while the other one is on a Japanese restaurant sushi table with lots of conveyor floors for the sushis & up + down ramps, so if you fall down while drifting & you got 60,000 points in a single drift, you can fall on a wrong angle and ALL THOSE POINTS ARE GONE! FUCK THESE MISSIONS TO HELL!

 

Other than that though, the rest of the challenges are actually fun & tense as hell. The final championship can be unfair because the other car ALWAYS go really far in front of you, unless you hit the car with a weapon at the right time. My final championship match was actually freaking insane since it's a 5 consecutive race, and by the end of the 4th match, it was either me or 2 other CPU opponents. And in the last race, I started at the bottom because I got slammed by other cars, then in the VERY LAST LAP, I used my power up at just the exact moment to hit the CPU on 1st place, and then I finally won the damn championship.

OH THIS FEELS SO GOOD!!! If I lost that final match, this would be a whole nother story entirely!

 

11) Dragon's Crown Pro

Platform: PS4

This is a remaster of the game on PS3, with added touchscreen support. This game is from the same dev as Odin's Sphere & Muramasa the Demon Blade for Wii, but a lot more traditional Dungeons & Dragons which now that I think of it, is probably heavily inspired by that surprisingly awesome Capcom arcade game Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, only not so ridiculously hard that you have to insert coins over and over again. And as it turns out, IT IS. This game is actually a spiritual successor to the first one, Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom because the lead designer worked on that game when he was young. No wonder the game feels so familiar!

 

Because it's a spiritual successor, the gist of the game is also the same: pick which character you want to pick, then hack & slash enemies up. You get a hub world where you can buy/ sell/ repair equipments before doing a mission, as well as go to an adventurer guild to get sidequests & upgrade your character stats + gain new movelist to make combat even more fun. The story progression is by, well, going to different missions & hack monsters + enemies up like good old Tower of Doom! Though aside from the usual beat em up combat with RPG equipment mechanics, this game does mix things up. You can find dead bodies of other players which you can either burry to get items, or revive so they can help you in your journey. When you get farther into the game, you'll gain the ability to use different runes, and you do this by buying runestones from a mage in the hub world, and then in each of the 9 stages, you will see markings on the wall like this. This thing that looks like a C & W for example.

Then you can mix 3 rune languages by hovering your right analog stick cursor to the language & click on it to give different spells a go. There's a spell that gives you healing, power up, and even unlock secret doors & show secret treasure chest which that guy with a sack can open for you which either gives you weapons, armor parts or accessories. You know, the usual dungeons and dragons staple. 

 

Interestingly, this game has around 10 levels, but 9 of of them has 2 routes. You unlock the second route after completing all 9 stages, and as expected, it's a lot more difficult, but also necessary because you need to complete them all to obtain various stones that you will then use to battle the final boss in the 10th stage, which is so very much this guy, but with MANY more moves & thankfully a lot less cheap to fight.

Funnily enough, you DO get to fight a "Red Dragon" before this guy in a previous stage, and that guy is somehow even harder than the final boss. I don't know how, but it is what it is!

 

Then after you beat the final boss, you get a great celebration of your character which makes you feel like a badass, but then the game's version of a new game plus happened, and it basically tells you to do the same thing as before with the stones collection because "there's another final boss stronger than the guy you face before, so if you want to, please collect 9 more stones and beat that guy".............

 

[Legolas_Katarn 1,817]

Completed: Galak-Z
Platform: PC

70s anime styles space action game. You can switch between a ship (guns, missiles, dodge) and mech (sword, shield, and grapple) mode and will find or purchase upgrades with salvage between each mission. Expressive animations for your character on the bottom left of the screen that shows the effect on him while doing things like boosting or attacking and enemy pilots on the bottom right get the same treatment. Responsive movement. Light on content with limited mission variety, upgrades that are taken from you after each season (every five of the 20 missions) that you will likely just get back, enemy variety, and locations but the base gameplay is enjoyable while it lasts.

 

[Kaz32 1,216]

12) Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

Platform: PS4

This is the remake of the PS2 game, which also includes the original game so that means there's 2 games in 1. WHAT A DEAL! And this remake is SOOOOOO much better than the original that I played long time ago but only managed to finish the first chapter. It's from the same dev as Dragon's Crown, but this one is an altered version of Norse mythology, though surprisingly only a few characters actually have the usual names like Odin, while the rest of the characters are most definitely from the original myth, but with altered names. Like Gwendolyn who's supposed to be Brynhild & Oswald who's supposed to be Sigurd. No Thor or Loki in this one. This game is pretty much one giant love story for the 5 characters you get to play, and also with preventing Armageddon as the main plot, and it's pretty sweet overall, especially Velvet & Cornelius. Those 2 are perfect for each other & they deserve a happy end after all the shit they went through.

 

I don't know why this game forces you to play characters in set orders rather than having you pick which of the 5 you want to start as because every character has their own story & their own timeline of event, and it should be better to jump between different characters in chronological order. I mean Resident Evil 6 lets you pick which characters you want & you can play in the order that fits the timeline. Ah well, it is what it is. 

 

The original game was SO janky because not only are you unable to do flashy combos like the remake, but every attack you do uses stamina. Yep, it's Dark Souls before Dark Souls made stamina for attacks popular. The remake completely changes the combat and now you can do 100+ combo chains like nothing with each characters, and all of them have their own special moves you can pull off that you can upgrade in their own skill tree.

I collected every skill & got S ranks on every single battle. It's so much easier to do compared to the original because all you need to do is chain 100+ combos, and kill enemies as fast as you can. It makes the original FAR inferior in comparison which I found out after switching to the original mode in the game. That's AWESOME that a game lets you play both the remake & the original version and it's not just a cosmetic change!

 

This game is surprisingly very damn long because you have to play the game with all 5 characters to get their complete story, and then at the end you need to play against 5 different bosses, but you're given the order on which characters fight which bosses. Obviously you have to pick the right characters to get the good ending, but depressingly you have to mix and match every possible combination of each bosses to get the true end because specific characters have their own interactions. The good thing is only the first 3 have multiple special bad ends while 4 & 5 have generic ones, so you can just do the first 3 without needing to do boss 4 & 5 again after you do them. BUT when you do them all, the true end is damn worth getting. 

 

13) Crewsaders

Platform: PC

This is a fun local multiplayer game where you control this siege tower, uh, thingy and you along with 2 other people control it. Just look at this thing

 

The key in this game is teamwork & not panic. If you control the sword, then stick with it because you have to move it as the other team move their shield to block it. If you go all over the place, you're fucked. It's damn satisfying once you kill the other team & make them bites the dust. Shame there's no story mode though, this is just a casual vs game match. Still fun!

 

14) The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game

Platform: PC

A very lighthearted point & click detective game where you're a frog detective & you have to investigate an island that's haunted by ghostly noises. I like how in the intro you & your boss talked to each other & he said something about Indonesia, and the frog actually say accurate Indonesian phrase. That makes me happy!

 

It's a short & sweet game. All you do in this game is collect items, talk to different people, get items from them & give items to them until you get all the items you need & progress through the game. Short but sweet. 

 

There's a second game called Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard, and it looks more elaborate this time around. Can't wait to see what that game's about!

 

15) Paperbark

Platform: PC

This is another short & sweet game based in Australia where you control a wombat doing his thing in the forest. 

AWWW, LOOK AT THAT CUTE LITTLE, well actually this thing is surprisingly big because it's the size of an axe

but AWW LOOK AT THAT CUTE THING! 

 

This is a bushfire awareness game, so the poor guy had to get through a bushfire as it happened, but in the end he's ok & it ends cutely. PHEW, good thing the dev are actually nice people and not sick bastards!